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Quote-Unquote posted:Does it have a rulebook that doesn't make you feel like you're actually in a Lovecraftian nightmare? It uses the modern Fantasy Flight rulebook thing of having a "play the game by following this, in order" condensed rulebook, and then all the actual rules in a second indexed rulebook that you use to look up the questions you have about "wait, what does this game mechanic do in this situation" once you've been playing a while. It's a great way to do it because putting all the detailed rules into a "play like this" book would make it this giant mess of parenthetical information impossible for new players to follow, and arranging the rules in chronological order requires you to flip back and forth trying to remember where it talked about whether curses are invoked before or after the serpent-people sing their hypnotic song when the stars align because you are sure you saw something about that but now you can't remember where.
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Sep 7, 2016 14:59
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Professor Shark posted:I like how it drove goons insane, ranting and raving about how it was all a hallucination and the show was a straight forward cop drama skasion posted:It was though. Yeah, but it's just funny how so many people were pissed off that Rust didn't fistfight Cthulhu
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Sep 7, 2016 15:17
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Companion Cube posted:It uses the modern Fantasy Flight rulebook thing of having a "play the game by following this, in order" condensed rulebook, and then all the actual rules in a second indexed rulebook that you use to look up the questions you have about "wait, what does this game mechanic do in this situation" once you've been playing a while. It's a great way to do it because putting all the detailed rules into a "play like this" book would make it this giant mess of parenthetical information impossible for new players to follow, and arranging the rules in chronological order requires you to flip back and forth trying to remember where it talked about whether curses are invoked before or after the serpent-people sing their hypnotic song when the stars align because you are sure you saw something about that but now you can't remember where. That sounds much more sensible. FFG rulebooks are often lovely but the games are sometimes simple/mechanical enough that it's fine (like Galactica or Chaos in the Old World, in which you play one turn and you basically know how to play apart from a handful of events that pop up) but Arkham was just impenetrably horrible because it was complex AND poorly written. Descent 1st Edition was like this, too.
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Sep 7, 2016 15:57
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His dialogue loving sucks, because he was a sperg loser bitch, but I do like that his sad brains condition made him write some nice and creepy poo poo
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Sep 7, 2016 15:57
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skasion posted:Lovecraft's body of work isn't THAT large and dismissing his explicit racial ideology as basically not there is doing him a disservice imo. As other people in the thread have noted it tied into his general fear of everything, but I'll take it a step further and tie it to his fear of evolution. Black people in his work are frequently likened directly or indirectly to apes, and this isn't a coincidence, it's because they suggested to him that the boundaries of humanity were mutable and that humanity itself is not a sacrosanct enlightenment white guy on a pedestal, it's just a beast that happened to be unusually pale for some reason. Read "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" for example of what I mean. In some other stories there's a similar evolution-focused terror around fish. The Shadow Over Innsmouth for example turns on this horror that lies in humans not really being pure humans, having come from something nasty and subhuman that polite white guy society can't tolerate. It's a recurring theme with him and I think it's too meaningful for his stories to just disregard. There's nothing wrong with that either. Interestingly, from what I've read of Lovecraft (a few of his stories), there might be some inherent, bitter irony that the primitive, ape-like savages of the world seem to know, and have known since time immemorial, what the white man and all his philosophy and science was only just learning now, at great expense: to keep one's eyes forward and not set one's sights too high.
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Sep 7, 2016 16:48
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some stories are boring af
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Sep 7, 2016 16:56
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vols bitch posted:some stories are boring af *inhales deeply* much like your posts!
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Sep 7, 2016 16:57
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If Lovecraft wasn't so goddamn racist, he never would have written the The Shadow over Innsmouth, which is a really good story about a hick New England town that's been miscegenating for generations with undersea demons. So it's a bit more complicated than saying "Lovecraft is good except for how racist he was." For better or worse, his weird racism was an integral part of the worldview that allowed him to write some of his most unique and memorable stories. Probably because his racism was at least in part merely a maladaptive manifestation of some deeper and more primal fears about the tension between our animal and human natures. Lovecraft's fears and neuroses are actually pretty relevant and relatable, it's just that his cultural upbringing and badly broken brain unfortunately caused him to direct those fears and neuroses at black people and Jews.
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Sep 7, 2016 17:02
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Quote-Unquote posted:*inhales deeply* my posts are so bad that you would go insane if i described them to you
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Sep 7, 2016 17:05
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Lovecraft at times seems like he understood that the unknown is scarier than what's revealed, but in most of his stories he couldn't resist filling in the details or just going "AND HE WENT INSANE AT THE HORROR" and loving it all up. Anyways, here's a good Lovecraftian story not by Lovecraft. http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm
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Sep 7, 2016 17:13
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Innsmouth wasnt turning into monsters by loving black people or asians or w/e. That would be racist. They were loving monsters. "Oh," I hear you gabbling because I am putting words in ur mouth. "But monsters were just a stand in for black people." that's loving retarded. It could be said of beowulf or anything else that has ever had monsters in it, and 99% of the time would be just as stupid.
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Sep 7, 2016 17:13
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Nathilus posted:Innsmouth wasnt turning into monsters by loving black people or asians or w/e. That would be racist. They were loving monsters. "Oh," I hear you gabbling because I am putting words in ur mouth. "But monsters were just a stand in for black people." that's loving retarded. It could be said of beowulf or anything else that has ever had monsters in it, and 99% of the time would be just as stupid. Most monsters in fiction actually are manifestations of the unknown and reflections of innate xenophobia within the culture that produced them.
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Sep 7, 2016 17:21
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Jonny 290 posted:marry/gently caress/kill i don't think mere mortal men can comprehend the poo poo giger must have been into in the sack
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Sep 7, 2016 17:24
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Falun Bong Refugee posted:Most monsters in fiction actually are manifestations of the unknown and reflections of innate xenophobia within the culture that produced them. Sure. The fish people of innsmouth hint toward that neurosis among others. It's getting from there to explicit racism which requires you to stretch the reading like hell. Xenophobia and/or fear of infection by the unknown!= racism. Words mean things. We know the dude was hella racist personally. It makes taking fishing trips in his fiction hard to resist. But it's stupid to distort a reading that badly just to smugly proclaim, "yup, racist!" There are plenty of whities getting corrupted by elder forces in his stories that have nothing to do with an angle that can be tortured into something that vaguely looks like an argument against miscegenation. Making that kind of reading is somewhat similar to a stupid fundie reading of harry potter where all the focus is on the word "witch" or the fact that the characters do magic, and the bulk of the real meaning of the work is utterly missed.
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Sep 7, 2016 17:37
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incidentally if you guys are interested in reading some lovecraft and his spiritual ancestors/descendants this is a pretty good anthology, that said most of it including the Lovecraft is public domain if you wanna save some bucks https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Compendium-Strange-Dark-Stories-ebook/dp/B006TXZD3G#nav-subnav
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Sep 7, 2016 18:37
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Probably not, OP. I'm told Knut Hamsun is objectively good, though.
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Sep 7, 2016 18:54
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skasion posted:Lovecraft's body of work isn't THAT large and dismissing his explicit racial ideology as basically not there is doing him a disservice imo. As other people in the thread have noted it tied into his general fear of everything, but I'll take it a step further and tie it to his fear of evolution. Black people in his work are frequently likened directly or indirectly to apes, and this isn't a coincidence, it's because they suggested to him that the boundaries of humanity were mutable and that humanity itself is not a sacrosanct enlightenment white guy on a pedestal, it's just a beast that happened to be unusually pale for some reason. Read "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" for example of what I mean. In some other stories there's a similar evolution-focused terror around fish. The Shadow Over Innsmouth for example turns on this horror that lies in humans not really being pure humans, having come from something nasty and subhuman that polite white guy society can't tolerate. It's a recurring theme with him and I think it's too meaningful for his stories to just disregard. There's nothing wrong with that either. This here, this is a good post. A lot of guys in that era grew up being told they were something special, you know, your priests or pastors or your science teachers or whatever adult authority figure, they'd tell you, "you are not just an animal, you are SOMETHING SPECIAL, you are a CHILD OF GOD and MADE IN HIS IMAGE". But the terrifying truth of science too horrifying for mortal men to comprehend is that you really aren't. You are a hairless ape with a spear and a torch, and you aren't any more "special" than some ooga-booga racial caricature praying to atmospheric phenomena. Lovecraft was racist as poo poo, and that's okay.
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Sep 7, 2016 19:25
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I wish Kindle's horror section wasn't so goddamn awful and filled with porn.
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Sep 7, 2016 19:42
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What? What kind of moron are you?
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Sep 7, 2016 19:49
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It's not even good porn, it's just words about getting hosed by a werewolf or something. Hardcore Twilight.
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Sep 7, 2016 19:50
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I like his work, and the whole theme of things we can't and probably shouldn't attempt to know. Very mysterious and foreboding. It taught me how important things left unsaid and sights left undescribed were, regardless of how florid his writings sometimes got. But it amazed me how much scarier some of his peers and later writers were, when writing similar types of stories. I don't think any of Lovecraft's actually spooked me much. Algernon Blackwoods' 'The Willows' was amazing, though. And just about all of Stephen King's Lovecraftian stories have a much more palpable sense of the sinister. Then again, I've long since learned it's not the horror aspect of his stories that appeal to me. That said, I sometimes get a smile out of reading things that reveal Lovecraft's apprehension about dark faces. Like in the one story where amongst a sea of unwashed, sallow faced immigrants, the narrator found a "good, wholesome Irishman". Yeah, he wouldn't have liked me much I imagine, but it's not like I love the guy himself, just his stories. Linnear fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Sep 7, 2016 |
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Sep 7, 2016 21:22
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Just found the passage I was looking for in my annotated edition. It is a quote from his wife "He became livid with rage at the foreign elements he would see in large number, especially at noon-time, in the streets of New York City, and I would try to calm his outbursts by saying: "You don't have to love them; but hating them so outrageously can't do any good." It was then that he said: "It is more important to know what to hate than it is to know what to love."
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Sep 7, 2016 21:39
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Somebody post his poem about God making a mockery of man and filling it with vice.
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Sep 7, 2016 22:22
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He'd be an insanely prolific forums poster if he were alive today. The guy wrote thousands upon thousands of letters. He probably would die of excitement if he knew e-mail was a thing.
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Sep 7, 2016 22:22
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GRANNYS PEACH TEA posted:Somebody post his poem about God making a mockery of man and filling it with vice. "When, long ago, the gods created Earth In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth. The beasts for lesser parts were next designed; Yet were they too remote from humankind. To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man, Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan. A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure, Filled it with vice, and called the thing a friend of the family."
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Sep 7, 2016 22:39
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he was best buds with bob howard the creator of conan howard put a bunch of stygian mythos and themes in his stuff as a result lovecraft was a turboracist and howard was so hosed up he comitted suicide when his mother died
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Sep 7, 2016 22:42
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I AM THE TOILET posted:he was best buds with bob howard the creator of conan He also let Clark Ashton Smith expand on the Mythos (which is cool, Smith is good but Lovecraft should never have let Derleth near his work)
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Sep 8, 2016 00:02
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Adventure Pigeon posted:Anyways, here's a good Lovecraftian story not by Lovecraft. Oh! I read this a while ago and absolutely loving love it. Good stuff.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:14
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Cymoril posted:Hmm. That depends on how you feel about non-Euclidian geometry, OP. One day I realized I could google non-Euclidean geometry, and find out more about why it was so insane and popular with aliens. That was the most disappointing google of my life. There are two types of non-Euclidean geometry, elliptic and hyperbolic.  Well, okay, but how did that drive anyone insane in the Mountains of Madness? Then I saw the Lambert quadrilateral. Bitches don't know about the Lambert quadrilateral.  I'm insane now.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:20
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Nathilus posted:Innsmouth wasnt turning into monsters by loving black people or asians or w/e. That would be racist. They were loving monsters. "Oh," I hear you gabbling because I am putting words in ur mouth. "But monsters were just a stand in for black people." that's loving retarded. It could be said of beowulf or anything else that has ever had monsters in it, and 99% of the time would be just as stupid. Correct, the fish men were a stand in for his Welsh grandmother.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:27
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my grandmother was a gorilla guess ill kill myself
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Sep 8, 2016 00:34
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i mean if i were that guy i'd be like drat dude my grandfather was hosed up, oh well
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Sep 8, 2016 00:34
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Aubergine Mage posted:He also let Clark Ashton Smith expand on the Mythos (which is cool, Smith is good but Lovecraft should never have let Derleth near his work) I shittalked Derleth earlier in the thread. The worst are the ones he "finished" for Lovecraft posthumously and that misleading just list Lovecraft as the author. Derleth clearly couldn't grasp the whole "the Abrahamic god doesn't exist and there is no simple good/evil dichotomy" thing and wrote some of the most mundane crap ever.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:39
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CaptainSarcastic posted:I shittalked Derleth earlier in the thread. The worst are the ones he "finished" for Lovecraft posthumously and that misleading just list Lovecraft as the author. Derleth clearly couldn't grasp the whole "the Abrahamic god doesn't exist and there is no simple good/evil dichotomy" thing and wrote some of the most mundane crap ever. And unfortunately, a lot of writers doing Mythos stuff now take their cues from Derleth. But still, without Derleth, Lovecraft's work would probably have fallen into obscurity on his death since he was (I think) instrumental in keeping HP's name alive.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:58
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corn in the bible posted:i mean if i were that guy i'd be like drat dude my grandfather was hosed up, oh well Its a metaphor for how lovecrafts dad had syphilis and died a maniac in a sanitarium
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Sep 8, 2016 01:01
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i live in Lovecraft country irl AMA
Mariana Horchata fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 01:08
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Aubergine Mage posted:And unfortunately, a lot of writers doing Mythos stuff now take their cues from Derleth. But still, without Derleth, Lovecraft's work would probably have fallen into obscurity on his death since he was (I think) instrumental in keeping HP's name alive. Yeah, Derleth really kept Lovecraft's legacy alive, despite making GBS threads on it every time he tried to add to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkham_House
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Sep 8, 2016 01:35
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Mariana Horchata posted:i live in Lovecraft country irl AMA Have you gone mad yet? How many times?
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Sep 8, 2016 01:52
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rocket_man38 posted:my annotated edition. i have this too. its slick
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Sep 8, 2016 01:57
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It's easy to see how you'd go insane in New England, with its perpetual cloud cover, frigid, endless winters, and its pale, thickly built and brusque populace, distrustful of 8-Bit Scholar fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 01:59
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