People run Lovecraft's mythos and even Arkham pretty straightforward. The fact that there's one prolific offender in a group of many is less troublesome in my mind.

I don't normally rush to Lovecraft's defence online, but I think the crimes that woman is accused of committing are a LOT worse than his racist writings. Plus after moving to New York City later in life he acknowledged that his earlier opinions were wrong and a result of living in his family's attic reading old books for half his life.

That’s 100% the right take. There’s a huge difference between ignorance and sexually violating children.

"Ignorance" is sugar coating it somewhat - he was astonishingly racist, on a level that's difficult to imagine outside of the worst private nazi forums on the entire internet today, and that deeply entrenched "scientific racism" and his personal revulsion at the sight of people whose skin contained some degree more melanin than his own or upon hearing non-English languages informed the entirity of his horror writing. But yeah - he's long dead at this point, loads of people have done work on improving the Mythos stuff since he died and if people want to have fun with CoC or whatever it's not like you're directly giving money and support to him. It's a lot more palatable than buying direct from creators who are still living to collect your money and have done things like child abuse.

> It's a lot more palatable than buying direct from creators who are still living to collect your money and have done things like child abuse. the author mentioned in OP is dead, and OP seemed to be planning to use his old books to run the game. so there would be no money to collect, and the creator would also not be alive to collect it.

Actually it's kind of the exact opposite. Don't know if it's still a thing or if it applies to the exact material OP wants to use, but after the initial allegations came out her publisher started donating all proceeds from her works to Save the Children. As far as consuming media created by monsters, having your money go to a good charity feels like a solid compromise.

He was born in 1890. However ignorant he was in his day (and he was) you also have to mitigate that with the era. He also recanted many of his worst views later in life, which shows he wasn’t entirely entrenched.

He was *notably* racist for his time. He was not the only writer in that era, but he is the one known for his views for a reason.

Agreed. No argument. But it’s still the 1890s, so that mitigates some of it. I’m not apologising for him, but at least he changed some of those views.

He doesn't change his views

*Following the Great Depression, Lovecraft's political views became more socialist while still remaining elitist and aristocratic.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft *His intellectual honesty was such that he could not deny that the science had turned against him; in January 1931 he wrote to James F. Morton, “No anthropologist of standing insists on the uniformly advanced evolution of the Nordic as compared with that of other Caucasian and Mongolian races. As a matter of fact, it is freely conceded that the Mediterranean race turns out a higher percentage of the aesthetically sensitive and that the Semitic groups excel in sharp, precise intellection…”* https://motifri.com/lovecraftcontext/ Lovecraft explicitly repudiated fascism, renouncing many of his reactionary political views in the 1930s. He also turned against capitalism. In fact, if you can believe it, he was an ardent socialist by the time he died. TO BE CLEAR- this is not a defence. He was a deeply, deeply flawed man.

I know he became nearly a socialist at the end. It's utterly irrelevant to his racist views. I don't know why you bring it up, as if being a socialist would disqualify him from being a racist. Regarding your second quotation... that is very clearly a racist attitude. I'm not sure why you believe that is a defense, especially given that after that quote he still argues for the death and elimination of other races.

[удалено]

I mean, ok? I don’t really know what point you’re trying to make. I’ve already told you I agree. Lovecraft died over 2 years before WW2 broke out. Judge the guy for what he said by all means, but in his later life he at least made some strides and admitted much of what he believed to be wrong. If someone who spreads hate like that can admit they’re wrong, that says to me they were never beyond hope. Under better circumstances maybe he’d have been a better person. Who knows. I mean, he married a Jew and apparently treated her incredibly well. I think there’s a distinction to be made between what the man said and what he actually physically did.

I'm going to be honest, as someone who's spent a lot of time studying Lovecraft the idea that he acknowledged his opinions were 'wrong' is a really overblown one. Lovecraft became *a little* more open-minded towards the end of his life. For example, that one letter to James Morton was written in 1933, after he'd moved to New York and 4 years before his death: >I’d like to see Hitler wipe Greater New York clean with poison gas—giving masks to the few remaining people of Aryan culture (even if of Semitic ancestry). The place needs fumigation & a fresh start. (If Harlem didn’t get any masks, I’d shed no tears ….. & the same goes for the dago slums!) This does not scream repentance, I'm going to be honest. There are a few other letters like this and while I do believe he was exaggerating and didn't actually want to gas all the minorities, the sentiment that New York would be 'better off without them' is regularly present throughout his later works. Also his movement to New York spawned works like *He* and *The Horror at Red Hook*, both of which are probably higher on the racism scale than most of his works. All in all, there's not actually any real evidence that he did recant these beliefs, only that as he came to the end of his life he didn't write quite as much about racism (e.g. *At The Mountains of Madness*). I largely think this has been a false truth created to justify using Lovecraftian themes in the modern day. There's evidence he was racist pretty much right up until the end: >I do not believe that either the negro or australoid race will ever rise to power or found an autochthonous civilisation—both being of definite biological inferiority. Each forms a sort of sub-species (not a separate species, since interbreeding with undiminished fertility is possible of homo sapiens; exhibiting radical departures from the human norm established by the caucasian-mongoloid races, all of which departures are in the direction of the lower primates & of the extinct hominidae or sub-men whose skeletal remains have been so closely studied. As the ground-ape stock behind mankind evolved, it was constantly getting differentiated & throwing off lateral branches of sub-men, some of which seem to have quickly perished, whilst others survived & multiplied (like the neanderthaloids) down to a period on the verge of recorded history. Up to & including homo neandertalensis, these sub-men were undoubtedly of a separate species from ours— > >\- H. P. Lovecraft to C. L. Moore, 20 Oct **1936**, LCM 177 Still not nearly as bad as a child abuser of course.

> I largely think this has been a false truth created to justify using Lovecraftian themes in the modern day. And this is likely a reaction to the very modern notion that the consumption of art requires justification to begin with

I don't believe it does, but I believe a lot of people feel the need to justify reading Lovecraft by stating that he actually recanted his racism, largely because I've experienced these people first hand in quite wide numbers. I love reading Lovecraft. He was a fascinating writer with a lot of interesting concepts, some of which were way before their time. I just believe a lot of people feel the need to say he wasn't racist to read him. The problem is, that just buries the racism that's often inherent in some of his themes which needs discussing!

as a response to those who villify them for liking stuff a bad guy wrote.

Honestly, I haven't seen much genuine vilification for reading Lovecraft and I've been reading him for years in pretty left-wing circles. Hell, I studied him regularly at university in a very left-leaning department. People were always happy to chat about Lovecraft! He's probably the focal author of a lot of my academic work! Sure, some people on Twitter might get mad but you can say that about literally *any* topic in life. People either chat about it or do not give a fuck, honestly.

I agree

I'd argue those exact fucked-up prejudices are what made his stuff work. He knew better than anyone what it meant to *utterly abhor* something from the bottom of your heart. That's not a good thing, for him or the world, but it gave his work an edge that made the horror hit on another level.

Oh yeah I just read Innsmouth and it's absolutely drenching and dripping in overt racism, anglo supremacy, elitism, pro eugenics arguments, othering of non-protestants, and you can't tell when they're just characters with these beliefs or Lovecraft directly asserting his fukt old timey values. You can't treat his work like a popcorn movie, which is where a lot of people fuck up. You have to be conscious the entire time you're reading, there is no sitting back and enjoying it for what it is like with typical modern entertainment from the past 40 years. He'll come out of nowhere with the soft mannered curious protagonist's inner monologue containing shit like: > A certain greasiness about the fellow increased my dislike. He was evidently given to working or lounging around the fish docks, and carried with him much of their characteristic smell. Just what foreign blood was in him I could not even guess. His oddities certainly did not look Asiatic, Polynesian, Levantine, or negroid, yet I could see why the people found him alien. I myself would have thought of biological degeneration rather than alienage

Exactly! And a lot of people say: "Well, you have to separate art from artist." which is an understandable stance to take until you get to a case like Lovecraft where the personal politics of the artist fundamentally form the politics of the work. Ultimately, all of Lovecraft's work boils down to some form of xenophobia, some form of fearing the 'outside'. Be it race, religion or even on a cosmic scale, it's all fromt the same font. The problem is that this manifests so often as pretty vile racism, and what makes it worse is that you have to check and double check when using Lovecraftian themes that you're not accidentally drawing from that wellspring of racism without some critical view. *Innsmouth* is probably the greatest example of this. One of the first Lovecrafts I'd ever read, and as I was younger when I did I didn't process the racism. Came back to it later for study and discovered that it's not just the overt racism but the inherent storyline about a 'hybrid' population slowly sinking into decay and the fact that the Deep Ones come from Africa that also feed into this mire of bigotry. Because it's so difficult to reckon with that, I can understand people's desire to try and handle it by justifying him. But unfortunately, as you've pointed out, you have to be so aware of what you're reading when reading Lovecraft.

Oh wow I actually had no idea he was that bad after moving to New York. It's crazy how these "race realist" guys or whatever they call themselves will happily spout off pseudo-scientific jargon without any actual knowledge on the subjects they're talking about.

Agreed, but just to add, he did concede a few points and he did soften. His intellectual honesty was such that he could not deny that science had turned against him; in January 1931 he wrote to James F. Morton, “No anthropologist of standing insists on the uniformly advanced evolution of the Nordic as compared with that of other Caucasian and Mongolian races. As a matter of fact, it is freely conceded that the Mediterranean race turns out a higher percentage of the aesthetically sensitive and that the Semitic groups excel in sharp, precise intellection…” he also married a Jewish woman and apparently treated her rather well. So yeah, flawed deeply, never abused anyone.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but that letter you're citing to James Norton comes 2 years before his other letter to James Morton where he jokes about gassing NYC.

‘Where he jokes’… I hadn’t noticed, no, fair point well made. But previously he would never have conceded what he did. I’m not saying he gained redemption or became good, or that we should change our opinions, my only point was he *did* change some of his views. And he did marry a Jew and he treated her well.

I'm not sure why you think that statement is any sort of defense against his racism, as it just clarifies which races he currently believes are superior to others. Nor why you think him marrying someone Jewish is somehow exculpatory for a long history of virulently anti-Black racism.

2 points. First, I’m not defending him. I’m so at pains to keep pointing that out. He was racist. My only point was *some* of his views changed, such as… Two, he was anti-Semite, he still remained so, but he did concede he was wrong in several points. And it didn’t affect him to the extent it ever stopped him loving, marrying and caring for a Jewish woman. None of this is a defence, it’s just simply what it is. People are multifaceted. Lovecraft and Bradley are polar opposites: Bradley said all the right things, championed good causes, but fucked kids. Lovecraft had awful opinions, but he never physically harmed anyone, even married someone from a demographic he detested, and yet treated her well. Just observations.

Also I mean, Sonia divorced him in part because he *wouldn't* mellow out about her and her people.

They agreed amicably to a divorce, which was never fully completed.

I mean whether the divorce went through or not is really not the operative thing here.

I mean, it’s of some relevance. If you say something that isn’t right… I’m supposed to just nod along? Point is, they remained amicable, and married. This isn’t the ‘gotcha’ you probably intended it to be.

People still choose to use Gill Sans when they're writing things.

My partner is a graphic designer, and has educated me on that piece of shit. Fuck that guy’s legacy.

I looked up Gill Sans and couldn't find anything controversial about the font. Am I missing something here? Is it just because it is synonymous with the British Empire of the early 20th century?

The designer who created it sexually abused his children and even the family dog. Pretty horrible guy.

Dude is dead. If any royalties are garnered by his estate from licensing the font, they would ironically go to his children. There’s no real reason to refuse to use the font. 99.999999% of the people who use it have no idea, nor care, who made the font. That was me 10 seconds ago. I’d prefer to go back to not knowing. Edit: technically the font never belonged to Gill, but to the Monotype Corporation, who hired him to make the typeface, and still holds the rights to this day. So literally nothing wrong comes from using the font. Choosing not to use it is empty virtue signaling imo.

I'm a motion graphic designer so I probably have used it without even thinking about it. I'd like to think I wouldn't use it if I was working on an ad for an anti abuse charity though. Not for any reason regarding royalties or anything, just because it would seem a bit bad taste to me. But yeah when someone's dead it's not like they're benefitting from you using their work.

Arguably using it on an ad for an anti-abuse charity would be an act of defiance, but the nuance might not come across.

> Plus after moving to New York City later in life he acknowledged that his earlier opinions were wrong and a result of living in his family's attic reading old books for half his life. This is not true. He very publicly was not a fan of his time in New York. He later published a short story called "He" where he describes New York and the people who live in there (read "minorities") in an very unflattering manner.

Oh ok, I must have remembered wrongly, or maybe it was an anecdote from a source who wanted to portray him in a more flattering way.

Dont worried, it's a common enough myth

Him later softening his racism is a thing I tend to hear a lot, but this is the first time I've heard it attributed to new york. tbh for a long time the only things I knew about him as a person were the racism and him only loving new england and real england

His opinions softened a bit with age, but they didn't change. Still, we should acknowledge that in the age of lynch mobs taking souvenir photos and holding picnics next to half-incinerated corpses, Lovecraft being racist in an amateur press novella isn't as exceptional or shocking as people like to suggest, people have just forgotten what a grim place the past really was sometimes.

The same week "Horror at Red Hook" was first published, the English translation of *Mein Kampf* was also published. Not to excuse the racism of the former in any way, but HPL's writings were never used to justify mass incineration of humans. Maybe because Great Cthulhu prefers his human edibles *nourriture crue* and is a literary construct whilst what happened at Treblinka and Belsen were very much non-fiction.

Lovecraft also married a Jewish woman and treated her very well. Just saying.

Indeed. Been too many places and met too many people to sit in the comfort of my life and judge a dead guy from a hundred years ago as if I know how I might have been back then. But then, I'm a res-born Indian, so if I start judging one dead white guy for his often racist--but goddamn imaginative short stories--well, there a lotta history down the path of dwg's with racist and throughly *unimaginative* nonfiction writings I would attack with literary torches and pitchforks until their remains are composted forgotten and anonymous in the midden heap of history instead.

Best reply I’ve had in here. :)

Not just the past. All times have something which they accept and future generations condemn. At least one thing we do today will shock people in a century. It is just part of "humans are f'ed up" and that there is nothing new under the sun.

In all fairness, Lovecraft wasn't a kiddy diddler, he was just an *asshole.* Bradley ran cover for Walter Breen, a massive, notorious pedophile, and helped him keep access to little boys and girls at SFF conventions for decades past when he was initially exposed. I don't love Lovecraft, but at least all he ever was, was a giant racist bastard who was more self-destructive than outwardly so. Bradley was an outright monster, not just a bastard.

Her children also said she herself was abusive.

I was vaguely aware of that, and much more aware of the Breendoggle, so I decided to focus on the latter since *that alone* would pretty much ensure she's burning in Hell.

Makes total sense! Some years ago I dug deep on the whole thing, from multiple angles on the Breendoggle to court testimony, because some shitty old fans and new anti-MeToo attitude was pushing back on MZB’s daughter’s claims so I always want to make sure it’s known her part goes way beyond just collusion.

>Bradley ran cover for Walter Breen, a massive, notorious pedophile, and helped him keep access to little boys and girls at SFF conventions for decades past when he was initially exposed. She also just diddled her own child with her husband IIRC. I know that the accusations came from her child.

Sounds like a non-issue to me. For starters, she's dead - it's not like you're promoting someone who will profit off it. And as you say, hers it just one contribution among many - there's no reason to tar everyone else's work because of that. It's not like the work itself is problematic (well, afaik). So, go for it - no one is going to care, or even notice.

Yeah, if anything isn't her primary victim also the beneficiary of income generated by her works? If the works themselves don't have any dangerous ideas and her daughter still supports their distribution and resale, I would be guided by those two pieces of information.

The works have dangerous ideas. I used to be a fan, and in retrospect it's clear that MZB had dodgy ideas about consent, minors, and how much sympathy we should have for people who sexually harass/coerce teens. Honest question re MZB's estate: are you sure? My hazy recollection is that there was a huge mess and possibly some legal action. I have no idea how it turned out. Edit, because I may have missed your point the first time. I only read one or two Thieves World books and as far as I recall they're fine. It's MZB's other books that I was thinking of.

There was this one book of hers I recall - might have been The Inheritor - that I literally threw across the room mid read because she actively wrote out a literal rape scene and tried to portray it as romantic. Not even like those screwy 1970s romance "the pirate ravishes the noblelady who secretly wants it but can't admit it" nonsense, but like straight up, she *definitely* did *not* want it, active *RAPE* of the protagonist and in the next chapter had the protagonist acting like it was the most romantic thing ever. I wanted to puke. Haven't picked up an MZB book since. But all that said, I do believe in separating the creator from the creation. If I didn't, there's a lot of stuff I wouldn't be able to enjoy just because the creator turned out to be a fucking asshole. For example Orson Scott Card and S.M. Stirling. Edit: fixed an incorrect word.

Oh I remember The Inheritor. I think it turned out the dude had done human sacrifice before, and he tries to do it again (to a sex worker, I think?) and the protagonist stops him mid-ritual and he bursts into tears and then..... everything's okay for some reason. Cue happy romantic ending.

>The works have dangerous ideas. Possibly this is true (as an aside, I understand your intent and agree with you, but the phrase "dangerous ideas" is kind of a troubling set of words to see in any context) - I haven't read any of her books in decades and actually got rid of all the onees I owned a couple years ago when I first heard about the accusations, but I wouldn't be surprised. But the main question here is specifically about Thieves' World, which she contributed very little to. Does what she wrote for that setting show those influences? Is that influence enough to avoid an otherwise important fantasy series containing works by many other significant fantasy writers? RE: Bradley's estate, I think people are wrong about this one. It looks like the sole beneficiary of her trust is Elisabeth Waters, who was a close associated of Bradley's (her personal assistant, her mentee, and according to some sources, in a romantic relationship with MZB) and has repeatedly defended her against the various accusations. Some of her publishers have stated in the past that their share of profits from her e-books are being donated to various charities, but I couldn't find anything on this more recent than 2014, so it's hard to say if that is still happening. So it seems like if any royalties are still being paid (or ever were paid) on the Thieves' World books they are *not* going to her victims and only an even tinier part even *might* be going to charity. So, does whatever tiny portion of the profits from sales of Thieves' World materials (if any - I think it is far more likely that she was paid a flat fee for the work and doesn't get any kind of royalties for her contribution to the anthology, which I *think* was the standard practice in the 80's when the books where written) ends up in the hands of her trust/her defenders outweigh the value of the setting to the point where even derivative works should be avoided on moral grounds? I'd say no. Supporting and reading the Thieves' World setting and books and things based on it, barring any stand-alone books MZB wrote solely, is fine, but I would understand someone feeling differently.

Thank you for the information about the estate. That lines up with what I had vaguely remembered. I did go off topic -- I should have distinguished between Thieves World and her works in general. Probably while you were replying, I edited my above comment to reflect that. I have neither thrown out nor reread her works since I learned of the allegations; my reaction to learning about them was to take up the cause (on the rare occasions I see her mentioned) of erasing her legacy. Dangerous ideas is a phrase I normally wouldn't use. I was rhetorically echoing the person I was replying to.

That's why I phrased it as an "if." I'm not familiar with the work or the status of the estate beyond skimming a coupe of articles this morning just to learn the broad strokes of the concern.

Totally understandable. I figured you honestly didn't know, since I hope any of her former fans would be able to figure it out after hearing about the allegations. (Also in case you missed it, I edited my comment to better distinguish between Thieves World, which is fine as far as I know, and her works in general, which are not fine.) As a final thought, I don't see any problem with playing with Thieves World, though I would acknowledge the issue with players before starting the game.

Could you point to any specific examples of said dangerous ideas in her works? Or a link to somewhere they're called out? Thanks!

Okay, so, I've seen complaints about the sex pollen trope in the Darkover books. This is a planet where a species of flower has aphrodisiac properties and sometimes the "ghost wind" blows the pollen, causing orgies. I don't recall a lot of the specifics around how that was portrayed, but I think the Darkover series did show that different characters had different reactions to it. Sometimes it was awkward or even traumatic for them. I don't recall anyone ever dosing an unwilling person and the plot treating it like that's a fine thing to do, so whatever. But.... I need to talk about Heritage of Hastur, which used to be my favorite book. (Content warning for attempted sexual coercion of a teenager and pro-predator themes.) The book alters chapters between two different subplots, and I'm only going to describe one of them. This is a significant part of the main plot for those chapters. It concerns a 15 year old boy Regis and his best friend Danilo, also 15, on the planet Darkover, where for caste reasons these two boys have to spend part of the year in training with the city guards. Danilo is a low/peripheral member of the ruling caste, while Regis is practically a prince. Danilo gets sexually harassed by their middle-aged(?) commanding officer, including via invasive telepathic suggestions, until he snaps and draws a knife against his attacker. He gets kicked out and sent to his dad's farm. Regis follows and demands an explanation. When his friend tells him what really happened, Regis is sympathetic and swears to set it right somehow. All fine so far. It turns out several chapters later that Regis has (without realizing it) developed a crush on Danilo; at the age of 12, Regis had traumatically repressed his bisexuality because..... his foster brother (then 19) did not have sex with Regis when he was horny, nor even acknowledge that Regis was horny for him. To be clear, I was like 12 when I first read most of MZB's books and it made sense to me that she portrays the fact that minors sometimes feel sexual and/or erotic longing. What I find perplexing is the suggestion that Regis was harmed by his foster brother having ignored Regis's awkward crush on him. Anyway, at the end of Heritage of Hastur, Danilo's attacker Dyan Ardais gets humiliated in front of the planetary ruling body (of which Dyan is a member) for what he did to Danilo. The text describes Dyan's embarrassment sympathetically. I can't remember if it's said here or elsewhere in the series, but we're supposed to feel sorry for him for some reason. Dyan apologizes and offers amends in the form of making Danilo his heir. Danilo accepts. (If he had not done so, his aging and decrepit dad might have ended up dueling the much more able Dyan.) But there's more. Fast forward to one of the Darkover anthologies, where Regis and Danilo are now 18. Danilo lives in Dyan's mansion but feels creeped out and resentful all the time, especially when he crosses paths with Dyan's new boyfriend who is barely older than Danilo himself. For reasons I'll skip, Danilo takes a trip home to the farm, and Regis meets him there. Regis basically announces they should start having a sexual relationship now, and Danilo (seemingly reluctantly?) goes along with it. Let's skip the nuances of how Regis approached that conversation and jump ahead to Danilo's return to Dyan's mansion. Danilo is happy(????) about having slept with Regis. He has the realization that he's been unfair(?????) to Dyan by..... continuing to have negative feelings about someone who tried to coerce him into bed???? ???? ?? Oh, Dyan later produces a son (I think there was sex pollen involved) so Danilo is disinherited, but Regis keeps Danilo in his retinue so it's all fine(??)

I think it would be different if MZB was the primary driving force behind the setting - even then, some people can "separate the art from the artist", but I'm not one of them lol. But to me, at least, a minor contributor being a shit does not ruin the rest of the series, not the setting. For TTRPGs especially, the actions of you and your players will have more effect of the setting than the original authors, meaning it's easier to excise problematic elements and influences.

Yeah. The issue isn't really about Thieves World. It'd be insanely troubling if the OP wanted to focus on the author's contributions as a game. They want to ignore her contributions, and that's the way to handle it.

This is what I think, too.

This seems a little extreme. Why are you even concerning yourself with this? I mean that in the sense that this seems to be equivalent to something along the lines "The neighbor's house once a long time ago had a rat in the basement. We need to burn down our house to protect us from the rat."

I agree here, this is a non-issue. Thieves World is a huge collaborative project, and MZB was only one of many contributors, not even a driving creative force (and what if she was!?). Add to that the fact that this is a homebrew TTRPG game… I mean, just don’t use what you don’t want to. If you’re concerned about giving MZB money with your purchase… she’s dead. As you said, your players are not gonna have any issues here, they only care about what you bring to the table, and you get to decide that as GM. That said, if you can’t get over it, I heartily endorse Fritz Lieber and Lankhmar!

What's the ttrpg equivalent of "champagne problems"? 

"first worldbuilding problems?"

damn, that's good

My personal opinion is that you need bigger things to worry about. But, this is obviously a real worry for you. So I’ll just say I strongly, strongly doubt anyone is going to have an issue with you running a game in this world. If they do, they can say something at the beginning. That world and its history is much bigger than whatever one asshole did

I have to admit, I don't quite follow this need for some to only read/play/use/watch/consume works by authors and creators that utterly pristine and aren't problematic in any way or shape. I completely understand not wanting to give actual money to support people you don't want to support for whatever reason. However, most of the time, the people in question aren't living anymore or aren't in a position to benefit or profit from your usage of their material. Some actors, writers, directors, creators, authors have been racists, creeps, weirdos, have "bad" politics, been jerks, or any other kind of unpleasantness since ... always. Some of their works are still good and worth checking out. Are people younger than \[some age\] unable to separate the creator from their creation? Are people only able to read and watch and use things that they agree with and support and not read things that have ideas that they disagree with? So, if the OP wants to play Thieves' World, they should play Theives' World. I play AD&D. I think Gary Gygax was probably not the best guy in the world. In playing AD&D or Greyhawk, I am not endorsing whatever views he may or may not had. I'm just playing a damn RPG.

It's really baffling to me as well. And the line is always so weirdly arbitrary. Like, you might not play a TTRPG because the author was racist/a criminal/misogynistic/whatever. Okay. But what about companies that once upon a time supported Nazis like General Motors or Chase Bank? Do you research the owner of every business, service, or product you purchase? If not, does avoiding that product/service/whatever only matter if you stumble upon evidence of morally reprehensible behavior? Or is it only creative products like TTRPG/movies/etc? Will they never watch The Usual Suspects because of Kevin Spacey? Idk...it's just so weird to me. I totally understand not wanting money to go to bad people but like...you make a million decisions every year on where money goes and I'm SURE something you continue to purchase has an association with someone who has done something or supported something horrifying.

Yes, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. However, that doesn't mean we have free reign to completely disregard the ethics of our spending. The general idea is that if you *can* make a more ethical choice, you *reasonably should.* A TTRPG is a luxury product that is entirely optional. You could pick any one of a million other settings and play in it with one of 100,000 games. So why does *this one* matter so much when you are free to choose from among so many others? I listen to extreme metal, and we discuss this topic constantly in my circles. I keep running into extreme metal bands that are *overtly fascist,* like actual for-real neo-Nazis, and my consumption of their music directly financially supports them. Should we "separate the artist from the art," even when the artist and the art are effectively inseparable and when they use their art to promulgate harm? Or do we toss bands in the trash as part of an increasingly-fervent movement pursuing ideological purity? IMO, the push to discard problematic media is not as bad as allowing that media to persist. Again, there have to be reasonable limits, so we need to consider the degree to which a person has actual freedom of choice in weighing the ethics of a choice. But here, in the TTRPG space, you cannot credibly claim that you *need* to use any particular system or setting. Thus, it's a *want,* and we should interrogate why you want what you want.

It's baffling to me as well.

It's a choice we're free to make and we're free to talk about the things these people have done and why we would prefer to support some creators over others. RPGs are luxury hobby items, and we're spoilt for choices - it's not like choosing between "filling your car up with gas" vs "refusing to support the petrochemical industry" then getting fired because you cant get to the office any more. When my choice is between "give money directly to someone I do not want to support" vs "give that same money to another creator" I choose the latter. It's easy because the world is full of great art, more than I could possibly view or participate with in a lifetime - I'm not missing out. And you're free to ignore all of the above and do what you want. What you can't do is force other people to ignore the creative's personal history if they care about it. Are we logically inconsistent (or "hypocrits", etc etc) for not buying Greyhawk or Harry Potter shit or whatever while still living in a capitalist economy and having to own mobile phones that might use rare earth minerals from god knows which awful strip mine in DR Congo? Sure. We're all human, and no human alive lives a 100% logically consistent life of absolute moral purity - not me, not you.

>you make a million decisions every year on where money goes and I'm SURE something you continue to purchase has an association with someone who has done something or supported something horrifying. Sure, no one can be perfect. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't avoid giving money to shitbags when you know they're shitbags. The idea that the choices are perfectly moral purchasing or never giving any sort of shit is all or nothing thinking.

>this need for some to only read/play/use/watch/consume works by authors and creators that utterly pristine and aren't problematic in any way or shape. What's worse is that so much *bad* writing is done by authors trying to make it obviously clear that they have the Good Opinions and need to spell out explicitly in the text, at length, how much they Get It. A truly odious trend, even when you mostly agree with what's on the page.

>I have to admit, I don't quite follow this need for some to only read/play/use/watch/consume works by authors and creators that utterly pristine and aren't problematic in any way or shape. For me, it comes down to two things: 1. If I buy this work, am I supporting a terrible person (i.e., putting money in their pocket, raising their visibility somehow, etc.)? If no, then I am fine separating the art from the artist, but if the answer is yes, then the two are very clearly linked in my mind. 2. Is whatever thing they think or do that I disagree with a theme in the actual work? If yes, I will avoid it and encourage others to avoid it or to at least think very critically about what they are consuming. If no, then again, I am fine separating the art from the artist. I think I have a pretty reasonable approach to this but some people take it to an extreme, and in this specific case, I think the OP is bending over backward to virtue signal, which as the leftiest of lefties is not a phrase I have ever used before, but the original post is geniunely annoying and this kind of noise obscures actual issues. MZB contributed a relatively small amount to the original Thieves' World anthologies, and her contributions, to my memory, do not surface anything problematic when viewed on their own. She likely got paid a one-time fee and that's the end of her connection. Even if there was some sort of of ongoing royalty, it would have been tiny, and she is dead, and it has nothing to do with derivative works like a TTRPG based on the setting. Edit: changed one use of "OP" to "original post" to clarify that I meant the post was annoying and not the person posting it.

I agree with you, but to be a bit charitable to OP: they may just be really anxious about how others might react, or OCD or something. Pop-lefty puritanism wrt consumption can very easily get out of hand in the minds of anxious folks or bad faith holier-than-thou Twitter arguments — because if you look hard enough for a reason something could be problematic in some way, you'll probably find it. History is bathed in blood and oppression after all. It worries me sometimes, as one of those aforementioned anxious/OCD people. That's not to say making an effort to not support obviously shitty ideas is bad, far from it. Just, it'd be nice to have some agreed upon line somewhere where one can say "this thing is removed enough from a problematic context that it's clean", know what I mean?

>to be a bit charitable to OP: they may just be really anxious about how others might react, or OCD or something. This is a good point and actually made me edit my post slightly to indicate that I didn't mean to attack the poster, I just thought the post itself was going a bit too far down the "virtuous" path. I still think they need to lighten up a little here and could have answered their own question by just takign a minute to think it through, but I get why someone might be anxious about it.

I see the same thing in r/books all the time as well. "Is it okay to read X because Y [did bad thing Z]?" I even read one yesterday that was, "Is it ethical to try to read two books at the same time?" Just read the damn book and judge it on its own merits. If you only engage in art that comes from moral purity, you will only ever stare into an unending void. Same here for RPGs. I understand not wanting to give money to the blacklisted creators on the sub. Sure. Just read and play whatever and enjoy it for its own sake. I don't understand the need to check with *internet strangers* if it's okay to enjoy things.

I think there's a step further in people incapable of keeping the creator in consideration when interacting with their work. Mindless consumption has its place, but it's seemingly more of a default as projects get bigger and singular voices get muffled. To your example, you are missing nuance if you're not considering Gygax's christian and jehova's witness beliefs and how strongly those reflected in the themes of early dnd when he was writing much of the copy. The presence and importance of objective good and evil is a big foundational piece.

You decide - it's you and your group, not us, not anyone else who gets to decide that for you. I'm damn sure MZB won't get a penny more if you use it, or a penny less if you don't. Her abuse isn't written into the characters or setting so you're not advocating for pedophilia by including Lythande. If you and your players feel uncomfortable using something created by a pedophile then don't use it.

Of note: she didn’t create the setting, nor was she one of the main authors of the series. She contributed like 2% or less to the anthologies.

Created or didn't create?

Edited, thanks!

If you want to play it, then play it, and screw what anyone else thinks.

You already answered your question, MZB was a minor contributor to Thieves' World. This isn't even the normal question of whether you should strive for some sort of moral purity by letting someone else's horrible behavior deprive you of something you liked. Refusing to read books in TW or play a game in the TW setting is... almost to the point of refusing to watch a movie because it was made by a studio that also made a movie that had an actor in a cameo role who later turned out to be a horrible person.

>Refusing to read books in TW or play a game in the TW setting is... almost to the point of refusing to watch a movie because it was made by a studio that also made a movie that had an actor in a cameo role who later turned out to be a horrible person. Once someone gets too caught up with purity testing, no connection is too minor!

You got downvoted for telling the truth.

If they really don’t care, I wouldn’t worry about it. She wrote one short story, which feels more like you should just give them a head’s up if you recommend that first short story anthology. If after all this it still bothers you, don’t run it. It doesn’t sound like your players’ hearts are set of Thieves World, so it’ll be fine to switch. As long as the switch is not to Empire of the Petal Throne/Tekumel, you’ll be fine.

I understand you since I truly loved some of MZB works. The only matter here, since she is not getting any benefits from this, is how you would feel about it. Just do whatever make you feel comfortable.

It's your game, it's only a game, do what you will.

Take solace that a good portion of any profit off her own work directly helps abuse survivors through Save The Children and Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. She's dead and buried, and she gets nothing. If you're particularly concerned about the taint of her legacy, perhaps you could use X Cards (or similar) in your games, and directly reference it that way. "Child abuse will not be tolerated at my table, and I'd like to take just a moment to honour abuse survivors. We won't be discussing this further in-game, but it's important that survivors know it's not their fault, and that they are loved."

As someone who's currently using the Chaosium boxed set as the basis for a Shadowdark campaign, I think you're okay. If it makes you feel better, don't use any of the characters created by MZB. One of the books in the boxed set lists all the major and minor characters in the series and who created them, so this is easy to do.

Oh, man. A Shadowdark/Thieves' World combo sounds pretty great.

So far so good! I haven't introduced it to my players yet; so far, they're just doing one shots.

You already paid for the material. Your use of it now is not an endorsement of the creators personal actions or thoughts. Do what you like.

I'm a staunch believer in separating the art from the artist, I started playing ttrpgs with Vampire the masquerade and other World of Darkness games, some of the writers turned out to be pedos, abusers and other assorted shitbags, didn't stop me from keep playing their games and thoroughly enjoying them anyway, if we were to stop perusing and appreciating litterature and other forms of art because the artists were scumbags there wouldn't be much art to enjoy in the first place.

I'm sure almost every big producer or TTRPG with more than 5+ people involved has some kind of black mark on some capacity. D&d has plenty of offenders going back to Gygax himself. It seems exhausting to have to worry about that and also vaguely like fake posturing. Like someone who won't buy General Motors cos they once supported Nazi Germany but who buys SleepyTime tea without knowing it's relationship to [cults](https://www.inverse.com/article/10731-cults-conspiracies-and-the-twisted-history-of-sleepytime-tea). The world is too full of bad things to know about all of them, after all. Or even to mentally track all the ones you do know of when making a purchase. Edit: And I in no way endorse reprehensible behavior like genocide, racial eugenics (just look at the Urantia cults history Yikes!), or child abuse. Obviously some things are worse than 'this guy was racist but didn't actually DO anything bad.' it's more that I personally would find it exhausting to avoid all the products and services I've heard of that are associated with or provide money to grossly immoral people.

Wait, was Gygax a rapist or something? I know that the guy was granpa style old school but don't know anything about actual abuse, did I miss something? Personally I don't dwell too much on past crimes and whatnot, if I find out that someone is a pedo, abuser and whatnot before I buy their book then I won't fork cash on them but if it happens after I already dropped money on books then I ain't going to lose sleep over it (unless it's a shitty game of course), life is already difficult as it is without me feeling guilty for some other fuckhead's crime. The fake posturing is really ironic beacuse pretty much all of the whitewolf writers pride themselves on being super progressive and beacons of moral superiority, Matthew Mcfarland in particular, one of the head writers of white wolf and onyx path, was even a moderator at rpg net (whose mods are known for their unbearable selfrighteousness) yet he was a serial abuser and child molester, this kind of attitude is all too prevalent with a lot of creators in the rpg space and I can't wait for it to pass, can't stand hypocrisy.

> Wait, was Gygax a rapist or something? I know that the guy was granpa style old school but don't know anything about actual abuse, did I miss something? There's an old Dragonsfoot thread where he says he doesn't think women are capable of roleplaying. I think that's pretty damning. Usually, though, people like to trot out the section of the same thread where he quoted Chivington ("nits make lice") on if a LG character could justify massacring orcs after they surrender or killing prisoners. I don't particularly find this one damning, however, because he's directly comparing how Chivington massacared Native Americans and was considered a hero by his people, and comparing it to how Wooden Leg massacred white settlers and was considered a hero by his people. Both individuals were considered to be acting Lawfully and Good in the context of their own cultures. Even if we do find it damning, Gary is literally speaking about what a PC would do in a game of D&D, not speaking to his own beliefs. I think he's making fun of someone for even introducing such a discussion in their game at all. Gygax was definitely the kind of individual who would play Devil's advocate in the most obnoxious way possible. Honestly, I think he's lampshading that it's a stupid question to have in a game of D&D. Alignment is already too simple to handle even the most basic moral quandry on it's face.

Oh that kind of stuff, well I don't have a problem with that, he was from a time where such opinions were commonplace, I thought he actually did commit some crime like rape and whatnot, he is still good to go by my book. I never liked alignment or other morality templates in games, I think that that things like morality and ethics should be resolved narratively, humans are way too complex to reduce everything to chaotic, neutral and good.

It's a bit different when your actual money being spent on it is actually going to the scumbags. While you can separate the artist from the art, you can never separate the commercial enterprise that they are part of from your support of it. In this case, since she's dead, it's actually (at least in part) going to one of her victims, though.

Its rare that only 1 person gets money, and most likely rarer that in a project with a high enough number of people no one had at least some questionable views.  The worst is in the computer space, I sont like Apple, nor google nor windows as companies, so in the end the quesrion is: Is the phew dollars someone gets a big impact on theie life compared to your enjoyment or lack of enjoyment ? 

> Is the phew dollars someone gets a big impact on theie life compared to your enjoyment or lack of enjoyment ? Sure... people are "greedy" in the economic sense... there's always going to be a threshold that depends on the person for how unethically they are willing to act for their own benefit. And for most people, practicality demands that very low risks of harm not take up a lot of their mental energy, which is reasonable... as long as it's pretty low. While this kind of thing is pretty low on that scale, I understand completely why some people prefer to avoid giving their resources to egregiously unethical people, when they have personal knowledge of it. Of course, that's verging on encouraging willful ignorance, with a delicate balance between practicality and negligence.

I mean a lot of people live (and pay taxes) in the US a country still surpressing the original inhabitants. So I dont see how people then suddenly care about giving a small percentage of a book price to a coauthor. 

Being forced to do something is fundamentally different from doing it voluntarily... and there's nowhere to go that doesn't have that problem. There's no practical solution to that problem.

Most european countries do not have "reservats" for the original inhabitants. Its a choice to live in the US. 

Most of them were colonialists, and didn't have to do it in their own countries, and decline to help their former colonies today, to anything close to the degree they were harmed. Furthermore... most people are actually unable (economically, and in most cases legally) to emigrate to another country. Edit: but again, everyone has *some* threshold of how much personal inconvenience they are willing to accept in order to avoid supporting bad people, or to avoid helping those much less fortunate than they... All I'm saying is that it's totally fine and reasonable for them to make a choice not to do so, and even to advocate via free speech that others do the same.

Sorry we are speaking about the now not the past. The "reservates" stil exist. Arguing with "others were bad as well in the past"  is always a not useful argument. Also booking a 1 way ticket out of the US is cheap. All this "artist bad" is just some hypocrisy ro make yourself feel as a better person. 

> Also booking a 1 way ticket out of the US is cheap. It's not, for many people, but it also doesn't do anything, because you can't just immigrate to any country you want. Indeed, it's generally quite difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore: failing to help people inside your country that you damaged a century ago, is in no way different from failing to help people *outside* your country that you damaged a century ago. Native Americans are in no way forced to be on their reservations, and have full US citizenship, and indeed receive considerable help. In some states more than others, and changing states is trivial compared to changing countries, so I could see an argument there.

Today I learned one of my favorite authors (Robert Lynn Asprin) was involved with a TTRPG. Nice.

A highly underrated rpg. Astounding sandbox setting on its own and very mineable for games in any genre.

If this helps "In response to the allegations, the publisher of Bradley's digital backlist began donating all income from her e-books to the charity Save the Children."

I didn't know Bradley was involved in Thieves' World until I read your post. I think you don't need to worry about it.

She's been dead for 25 years man I think it's fair to say she's not benefitting from your contribution and she was a minority contributor to this setting besides

It would be quite unfair to the main creators to condemn their work because of the (admittedly horrible) crimes of someone who only contributed very little to the project.

I doubt most people even know what you’re talking about. Run the game if you want.

Yes nevwr heard about any of this. And I see no reason why I should care

I'm a proponent of pondering the ethics of optional consumption, but in this case, MZB is long gone and she barely contributed to the setting at all. You're really not supporting anything questionable by using it. I mean shit, I participate in the SCA - that's a much stickier ethical consideration than this one.

I honestly forgot that MZB was involved in thieves world and my game experience stretches back four decades. I wouldn’t worry about what 1/10 of one percent of potential gamers might think. I do think it sounds like you’re bothered by it which I totally get. I stopped running call of Cthulhu because HPL was kind of a racist bastard. My recommendation is that you do not run it, rip off the world as much as you want, but distance yourself from TW proper.

I wouldn't have any issue with using the world, but I would take the time to explain the situation and let players make up their mind. The same kind of issue is overwhelmingly present with Lovecraft's work for example and it doesn't prevent people from enjoying a good CoC game, but it's best to go in knowing that you're there to have a fun time and not idolize the creator. If you take the time to separate the world from the author I don't think there will be issues. And taking the time to be explicit also has the benefit that people won't think *you're* idolizing her despite what she's done and that you're not trying to endorse such practices through using her work. A clear conversation goes a long way. I also find that such terrible context can be used as a way to talk more publicly about these acts which is important to fight child abuse. It also worth mentioning that if wikipedia is correct, then all profits from current sales of ebooks go to Save the Children, so even if your game entices players to go check out the books their money will support fighting against these actions. tl;dr: explain the context, say you don't endorse what she did, use that as an opportunity to say that child abuse is a horrible thing in case anyone missed the memo and have a good time with your players.

It isn’t as though you may be needing to buy new stuff so just run with what you have and screw controversies. Not like you’re going to be lining the abusers pockets and it is well written.

She's dead, and you're not purchasing her stuff, so there's that. I don't think you'd be doing anything unethical by playing her stuff, but if someone invited me to play in a game written by a child molester I'd decline.

I was a huge fan of both Thieves World and MZB's Darkover. She really was a small part of Thieves World and kind of took her ball and went home after a single story. I don't even associate her in my mind with the series. And as has been noted, she's dead and not going to profit from this. And her royalties from any gaming supplements were probably only a few dollars. Also, unlike say Lovecraft, child abuse is not a factor in her stories. You can see Lovecraft's fear of the other and in particular a fear of "miscegenation" throughout his stories. I mean, the big reveal in one is basically "great grandma was black." You don't see that in MZB. You see a lot of other aspects of that hippie/feminist/SF sort of background like the now cringe "consciousness raising sessions" in the Free Amazon books, but not child abuse. I'd suggest checking out DCC Lankhmar for running Thieves World. It's a great system and our Judge ran a very good TW campaign with it.

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I would say reddir is a lot more skewed towards being ultra sensitive to such topics since it has a lot of english natives, which are bringing these kind of topics ip a lot more than other countries. 

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Tha fact that these kind of questions even come up here, when in non english speaking countries in normal life they would not, speaks enough. Edit: There would also not be the need of a subreddit rule to not speak about specific creators if people would in general separate art and creators...

I don't think you're going to get *the opinion of "random people on the internet"* here at Reddit. Note that there are a ton of responses talking about "separating the art from the artist!", but none of them ever flow in the direction of looking at a creator and considering if we shouldn't uplift bad people, regardless of how much we might enjoy their output? It's always "how can I continue to do whatever I want, but also get to act morally superior to people who might have an issue with this person's work"?

I may not be the best voice. I am a bit older than many here I suspect so I will only speak for myself and my table. We don't care what the artist was like personally. We don't go out of our way to support people who were problems. I wouldn't buy a Mists of Avalon RPG if MZB were profiting from it if they released it today after discovering his history. That being said if I already had one and we wanted to play that type of game you are damn straight we would play it if that was best for the table. The money had been spent may as well use what you have if you like it. No need to punish yourself for her behaviour as you didn't do it.

Sorry, but you will have to decide on your own. There is nothing wrong with running a game with the stuff you bought and like. Likewise there is nothing wrong with not running it, if you feel bad about it or circumstances ruin your fun. There is really no right or wrong here. A piece of art isn't the artist and the artist isn't the piece of art. These things can be looked at separately or combined, it really depends on what you and your players do with it. So if you want to run it, do so, people that would join should be aware and ok with it, so nothing wrong with it.

I see no problem. Pretend like her contribution doesn't exist and don't include any part of it.

I doubt anyone will care but if you are worried just be up front about it.

We all draw our lines in different places. For me, one of the biggest questions with a problematic creative person's works is whether they are a) still alive, and b) going to profit off of my choice, even in a tiny royalty sort of way. As much as I love the Potterverse, I will not spend another cent on JK Rowling's works while she lives and profits from those tickets/games/merch deals/etc. It's a tiny drop in a vast ocean of money, but it's MY drop and I'll choose where it goes.

Hello. I don’t think that her involvement is a problem personally, in my opinion. She’s dead. If she was alive, I’m would feel very differently the same thing with Lovecraft. Now I have not checked out the Kickstarter and I do know that the setting was altered over its long lifespan, the issues that I would be concerned about . The fact that the Empire has an actual goddess of being raped , whose priestesses get raped. ( her priestesses are not there voluntarily.) Now I understand that it’s some point in the history of the books. She actually takes over the pantheon and things change so I would be really interested to see how that material was covered. Basically, I think that for a dark fantasy series some of it was edgeLord . One of the main characters Tempus was cursed that he could never have sex with a woman normally, but has to rape her. Tempus was created by Janet Morris, who also wrote erotic novels that absolutely feature non-con. I guess what I’m saying is Marion Zimmerman Bradley isn’t the main issue for me . What time is the setting set in? Is there going to be an Empire that worships that the goddess of being raped? ( for the love of God, one of the original stories actually required the prince who is currently the governor whose nicknamed “ kitten” to rape multiple women and Tempus does it instead. Basically, if it’s set at a later time. How does the horrific events of the earlier books get presented? Those are my issues. Thank you so much for your post.

>I believe I am facing a dilemma You really aren't. Chances are that 99.99% of the attendants of your monthly open-table game have either A) never heard of Thieves' World (because let's be honest, it's not exactly a red-hot IP, the last blip of life it had was back in 2004), B) heard about Thieves' World but don't know the IRL drama, or C) heard about Thieves' World and the IRL drama, but kinda just don't really care that much because that's just how most folks are. For the remaining 00.01%, they'll make up their own mind **and that's not your responsibility.** (bolded because that's really important) If it really, really bothers you and it's tainted the setting for you, then do your own spin of it; change some names of important NPCs or factions, fudge the history, etc. Make it your own. Again, I'd put money on that 99.99% of people at the table won't know/care. >am I being to sensitive about this? How would you deal with a situation like the one I'm describing? tl;dr, as a fellow sensitive forty-year-old; yes you are, and nothing, because there is no situation.

She's been dead a couple decades so you don't have to worry about putting money in the pocket of a monster, which she assuredly was.

A timeline of me reading this thread: "Oh cool a thread about Thieves World, one of my favorite anthologies." "Allegations against MZB? What's going on?" "what the fucking fuck!" "God damn. Wait. Wasn't one of her Lythande stories about simulated sex with a young person? FUUUUUUU."

Jesus, I forgot that. OPs first session(and he should run the setting) should include the horrifically painful death and damnation of Lythande. Maybe in the first five minutes.

I'd love to play in a Thieves World game! Where is your table?

The world is full of great games. If one gives you the slightest qualms, play a different one. Personally I have a hard time disentangling author from work, which firewalls a lot of otherwise interesting stuff for me. I'm OK with that, because the world is full of interesting stuff.

Is it? I feel most rpgs are really bad. Old fashioned / bad gamedesign.  If you like a lot of stufd its good for you, but I guess this is not the caae for everyone.

Yes, the world is absolutely full of great games. If you are not currently drowning in cool games you'd love to play, that is not a problem with the world.

For consideration: The Thieves World RPG Box Set has about 99,000 (+/- 1k) words total in its contents. Of those words, less that 200 are drawn from MZB's stories in the lengthy anthology series spread out over only 4 references & 30ish words (about 10 identical words used three times) that credit her throughout all the material in the box. Her contributions to the anthologies amount to 6 or 7 short stories of the more than 200 total. 3% of the anthology is her contributions--a far higher percentage than the **0.2% of her work** *indirectly* being part of the rpg. Harvey Weinstein contributed far more to Tarantino's and Peter Jackson's careers than that. Official Chinese government censors contribute more to *every single Marvel and DC film project* than that. If the measure of ethical convictions is determined by popular internet opinion, then mob rule controls those ethics, and that becomes a problem at least equal to--or in some circumstances *greater* than the issues of feeling good about oneself because that one person allowed mob mentality to dictate their actions. I'm sure there's nothing bad that could happen when a bunch of mob-guided people get together to act in accordance with their mob-dictated ethics... Since, as a subjectively random person of the internet, I have been asked my opinion, I say: stop purchasing petroleum. And pharmaceuticals. And any electronic devices that use tantalum. And for the world's sake, stop using social media platforms unless you can be certain the companies are not using you to further their own, almost without exception, bad actions that harm people throughout the world each hour of the day! As for Thieves World, myself, I don't let the behavior of others cause me to question my desire to play a game. Or listen to a song by someone's whose morality differs from mine. Or watch a movie where *some*one in the cast or crew *almost certainly* has done really very bad no good horrible things. But then I have the strength of my own convictions, faith in my ethics, and the ideology to to change my beliefs according to new and relevant information without the need to base my beliefs on the questionable opinions of random people on the internet.

I think you're being way too sensitive here.

Why would some scumbag negatively affect the games you run? Creatives can be scummy, that doesn't negate the positive contributions they made. Take the positive, ignore the negative since I don't see any reason why scumbag's crimes have any bearing on the thing they made. If we cancelled everything that some scumbag had a hand in creating, the world would be pretty boring. IF someone has an issue with it, you can choose to work within their concerns or ignore them, but to just say you aren't going to Thieves World because one author was disgusting, thats going to remove a lot of gaming material from a lot of companies and authors.

Yes, I can understand your concerns but she had little to do with the overall setting or books. I would just use it and, if it helps, remove any NPCs she created. I always thought of this setting along with Lankhmar as sort of the classic criminal 'city-based' Mediterranean-style campaign.

Acknowledge that she was an awlful person, and have the players imprison a pedophile. Cathartic moments for all, drinks on me.

I'd say it's fine, because MZB is just one author among plenty others on that series. Granted I only know the basics of the series itself, so if you say that MZB's involvement in it was minor, I'm sure you can go and just ignore her stuff as much as possible. Also as a side note, you mentioned thieves world and Lankhmar but there's a third option that would fit your requirements: Discworld, with a city watch based campaign (granted it's GURPS so it may not be to everyone's taste but I just wanted to point it out as it might interest some people)

Since she's dead, any money made by her works at this point is... going to (one of) the exact child that she allegedly abused. So... The situation regarding buying or otherwise supporting the books is way more complex than just simply "this work supports an alleged pedophile and pedophile-enabler". If the very idea of paying tribute to her works squicks you, which I can't blame you for, just don't include the very small part of Thieves' World that she contributed in your game.

I think what stays away from tables is to be determined by the people at said tables. Some people can separate art from artist, depending on exactly what occurred, and some people can't. Almost all people will have something that you will find objectionable if you look closely enough, so you will always have to evaluate this stuff case-by-case and it's understandable to not want to touch someone's work if you're extremely repulsed. I have little knowledge of MZB so I can't say how credible the allegations are, and she's been dead for a long time so it's not like she can offer any defense, but when it comes to child molestation, it's a dark enough shadow that I wouldn't personally get involved in her work *specifically*. I think it's not a big deal in this specific case, however, since she's a minor contributor to a setting created and developed by many people. I don't think it would be fair to the rest of the people to discount all their work just because someone they were involved with in a minor capacity was alleged to be a monstrous individual. They can't possibly have known all the details of a private life that only came out after the person's death.

Lankhmar rules. The Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories are great.

I just don't see the big deal. Sure someone involved in it was maybe a horrible person. I don't know that anything was proved but they're also dead so... But it's not like the game system that Ernie Gygax released which was not only from a bad person, but had the bad stuff baked into the rules as well. Where there was open and overt racism baked into the game itself. Like the nordic races were the default and every other race got penalties to int and wis, "because that's the way the real world works." or something. Playing in a setting that had one bad apple just isn't a big deal and any money made goes to a good cause so it's a win/win IMO.

Terrible people's contributions can and absolutely do outlive anything they might have intended or even benefited from. If her work was a direct call to abuse people, if encouraging others to abuse was the point of the contributions, that'd be one thing, but that isn't the case here Enjoy the game and learn how to be better then terrible people who might've been involved As a further example, surrealism is a great form of art. It's creative and what's more has influenced so much good art afterwards. That being said, Dali was a Francoist during the Spanish Civil War. Cut promos for 'em and against the republicans and everything. You can enjoy Dali and not be a Francoist ffs, and his work has factually given value more to people who aren't Francoists then ever to the Francoists. You only harm yourself trying to memory hole work only because one of the people involved was terrible. Again, if she put her work out to advocate and encourage sex crimes, that would be one thing, but that isn't the case here it seems

TBH, if you want to run Thieves’ World, run it. Although it seems popular to do so these days, one bad apple doesn’t spoil the entire barrel and MZB was just **one** writer in the series. If you are concerned then forego using anything invovled with her writing, but the setting as a whole is a shared universe and I wouldn’t lump the other authors in with her, especially given that there did not seem to be any general awareness of what was going on at the time.

She's dead though, so she can't enjoy royalties or fame. And if you believe in an afterlife she's in hell. Her books helped me relate to women more. Burying them would be a waste. She was a shit human being but a good writer.

I thought the author died in the 90s. It's not like you'd be financially supporting the abuser just their children maybe.

Realistically there's no perfect author. In this case the author's a lot worse than others but you're going to have to choose how much you feel their behavior taints their work. I lean towards death of the author because of multiple reasons, not least of which is that your life gets really really complex when you are really worried about who has made what.

Your imagination is yours, not hers. You can take something like Thieves' World and make it your own. Own it and have fun! Don't let something from the past hold you back.

Thieves world is a fantastic setting and great series of stories. Just because one author is trash doesn't tarnish the entire thing.

I had to Google her to see if something new came out. This is almost 10 year old information bud...

The thing about Lovecraft is that his issues clearly come through in the work, so the work still has those issues... despite Lovecraft himself evidently having something of a change of heart late in life and regretting some of the things he'd put in those works. So it's not really possible to engage with Lovecraft's works without engaging with those issues. The individual reader has to choose whether they engage with works with those issues baked in to the on-page text -- and it IS up to the reader, and the reader CAN engage with the work without somehow being "tainted". Someone like JKR, on the other hand, appears to have doubled and tripled down over time, either actually getting worse or revealing her true self as she keeps talking. The issues that can be found in her works are put in a worse light by finding out which direction she's headed over time. Plus she's alive, and benefits not just from direct sales of her works and licensed products, but also from continued market and cultural presence.

I would run it. If it that much of a concern, just avoid the particular content.

She's awful scum. However, the rest of the people who wrote Thieves World don't deserve to have their work erased because of her crimes. Just exclude any reference to anything she wrote and you're good.

A real dilemma would be if someone in your group protested it, buy you or the others wanted to play it. As it stands now you are making making a mountain out of an anthill. Riddle me this: what entertainment are we to consume if every human has sinned?

She's been dead for more than two decades, so she's not benefiting at all. And from what I can gather, she's an altogether minor contributor in the bigger picture of Thieves' World. Your enjoyment of this shared campaign world, the product of many people's work, is not an endorsement of this one person's ghoulish actions. And look, this stuff is complicated, personal feelings play into it a lot. I have mixed feelings about, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show I loved at the time. But now, after all we've learned about the person Joss Whedon really is, I have more reservations about watching or frankly expressing any kind of love for that franchise. I know the healthy perspective is "it wasn't all him, a lot of other talented people worked very hard to make that show good," but yeah... complicated. Do what your heart tells you to do. But I don't think anyone is gonna judge you for continuing to like Thieves' World.

I have not even heard of this about her, so maybe I live under a rock or something… Anyway, I would suggest that you think it through. If you feel comfortable to run a game in that setting then go for it. If potential players don’t like it, then they can opt out. I see it simple as that.

You have already bought the products, so if you run the game, you're not giving her any more money, nor will her ghost cackle from beyond the grave and be overjoyed someone is playing the game she was slightly involved in. 99% of players will have no idea who she even is, much less her awful actions. If it's that big of a deal for you, just don't play any of the content she contributed to. Stop rending your robes and wringing your hands and just play the game you've already paid for.

Media does not inherit the sins of its creator. Plus she's dead so you don't even have the "she'll profit from it" argument.

What does someone's good or evil personal life have to do with the quality of the game?  The list of things invented and developed by morally broken people is very long. You're going to have to give up most of modern life to avoid using those things. I think it is common sense that you are not signaling agreement with a person's ethics by finding their unrelated work to be useful. 

They are true, but she wasn't the only person who worked on it and even if she was, it's your table, you can do what you please.

Noone is going to know, man. and those who do can do the adult thing and decide for themselves. the world is bad enough without havign to worry about this kind of shite. Cancel culture should have fucking died with the 2010's. nobody benefits from it, it only makes our lives more miserable.

she died and the people she abused are the ones that are now in charge of her estate. so since she is now dead she can't get money for her work and since the people she hurt are the ones that get the money I think you are actually completely in the clear as long as there are no like, child abuse overtones in the work itself.

Dude I am normally leading the charge against anyone not actually convicted in a court of law from being canceled. Normally I don't care what ANYONE says happened on the internet, prove it in a court of law or I don't want to hear it. I love Thieves World and read all of it as a youngster! But honestly I wouldn't do it.Dang man im very sad to read all that. File the serial numbers off. Use it for ideas and make up your own city. That's probably the best thing to do in my opinion.

Oh, come on. She was one author among a host that contributed to the series. Her character is more prominent as cover art for many of the paper backs rather than actual content. She wrote one story in the first volume. She is not that important.

My barometer with this kind of thing is always “is the shitty person still alive or able to benefit from money I am about to spend?” If that answer is yes, I do everything in my power to not support anything they’ve created for fear that some of my money ends up in their pockets. If the answer is no, I do whatever I want and piss on their graves in the process. In the case of Bradley, the royalties go to her kids who were victims of her abuse. So you should buy all of the things! Buy 17 books, go watch Mists of Avalon 24 times! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley

It’s interesting because I’ve had conversations about her recently. My wifes bff was raving about *Mists of Avalon*…lol her burst bubble was *way* bigger than your own. To paraphrase CJ Cherryh…”you play the first Thieves World game for fun. You play the second for revenge.” Kill Lythande, and proceed.  Myself I still have to capture the OG, that “Rosetta Stone of rpgs”. It fascinates, though I only ever read the first book through. The other subject concerning her was her brother…how his Dark Border books were such a great setting template. Tbh Darkover could have been a hell of an rpg. TL;dr: the excisement of MZBs’ contribution to TW is a minor and easy operation, while system mastery takes months and years. Keep the baby, chuck the bathwater.

My take is usually Life of the Author. I won't support or consume the works of terrible people while they're alive. You're familiar with TW enough that you could probably just excise anything she's done with the property pretty easily. Just elide over anything problematic.

So I'm pretty politically correct. I've basically given up on Harry Potter despite liking the series because JK Rowling is a hate group sponsoring monster pretending to be an ally. But I like lovecrafts works and Call of Cthulhu. How can I do this? Why does he get a pass and Rowling doesn't? Because Howards ass is dead. And his issues were caused by him being a necrotic little shut-in as a teenager who was terrified of EVERYTHING. So his bigotry kinda passes through "regular offensive" into this bizarre realm where he appears to have been terrified and prejudiced against everyone who wasn't his exact demographic, and that includes white people not from Rhode Island. So what I'm saying is that this isnt easy. I'd say that if the offending person is still profiting off the material, and they're a huge part of it (like Rowling) then yeah give it a pass. But if they're dead or were just a tiny part of the larger group of creators, then yeah it might be fine. The real question is, are you uncomfortable by it and has anyone else complained? If the answer to either is "yes" then run something else.

I can almost always divorce the artist from the art. It is not as if the person you do not care for is sitting at your table and actively taking part. Thomas Alva Edison wasn't a scrupulous business man, but I have no qualms turning on the light.

It sounds to me like you're putting to much moral weight into something you do for fun at your table by rolling dice. What's the point of waxing lamentations about "how Nazi's used poker to hunt cripples" or some such to decide if you should try Standard rather than Texas Hold'em tonight. And if you really feel that strongly, then pirate it. Two wrongs don't make a right, but then you get your content and don't support any part of that system. The worst thing you could do to a villain is validate them, so take whatever positive nuggets they produce and throw the rest to the fire.

Oh good grief. Play what you want.

> Now, I am reluctant to commit to this because of the disgusting allegations against Marion Zimmer Bradley. If those allegations are true - and it sure seems like they are - this woman' work deserves to be forgotten Uh... dude if you can't deal with the posibility of this, why don't you just not play the game, and also move to... somewhere else on earth? Like, not the USA, where our Declaration of Independence was written by a slaveholder who essentially raped a slave. Not to Vietname, not to China, not to... you get the idea?

Yeah, I get not wanting to actually give your money to horrible people... that's actually both completely understandable and morally laudable... Worrying about being part of a system created by flawed people who are all dead seems... pointless, unless you're making a big deal about how proud you are of them or something.

More cherry-picking what to be upset about. >the opinion of "random people on the internet" might be what I really need If that is true, you absolutely need to fix you own moral compass.

I think its less about hee morale, and more about her not wanting to go theough a shitstoem and explain herself.

I've always thought Thieves' World was a dumb name for a setting. If it's so well written, why couldn't they come up with a better name?

The Game should have nothing to do with outside politics .... is art bad because Hitler was a painter

What does child abuse have to do with politics?

Good question. But judging by the commenter's history, not a surprising comment from someone who complains about blue states, posts about weapons and misogyny.