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A Time to Harvest
 
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Average Rating:3.7 / 5
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A Time to Harvest
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A Time to Harvest
Publisher: Chaosium
by Harald H.
Date Added: 07/04/2023 02:59:56

Call of Cthulhu is about horror in a historical setting: settings that are by their very nature usually racist, sexist, classicist and religiously bigotted. That is obviously a problem since historically realistic characters would have grown up with all theses sentiments, and that may not be a nice or good roleplaying experience. It would also be rather miraculous for every group of heroes/investigators/students to overcome and outgrown their own such sentiments. Even if they do -so that one does not have to play attitudes that are obnoxious and toxing to our times and understanding- there would still be the problem of society. Because historically correct societies like the 1930s New England academia did NOT hold every person equal. There are ten pregen characters: one is a male White Anglo Saxon Protestant, nine are not. A guide to Miskatonic University in the 1920s suggests (historically correct to the best of my knowledge) that the student ration is thereby exactly mirrored: 90% of ivy league student were male White Anglo Saxon Protestants. The idea of female tenured professors is not deeply embetted in these times, either. Half the pregen characters are female: both students and one professor. None of those is WASP.

To me this -and a lot of details that would spoiler the game- mean that this campaign is not in any way interested in historically correct gaming. That is a legit decission, maybe the only possible option since otherwise female characters would be gravely limited in their actions. Please compare the contempous Ms. Marple and Sayers' Harriet Vane: both are heroines, both are successful, independant women and main characters. But they do not fight. Sayers's Lord Peter (occasionally Bunter) get into fight in the rare occasions that Dorothy Sayers allows them. But not Harriet Vane. Likewise ethniciy, religion and status (riches) were not so much glass ceilings as steel enforced battlements.

That leaves the problem: play in a historically ...plausible... way and work with the society that was or do as you bloody please, switch things around and change anything to your liking. I do not think that the second option is really offering any historic immension. I also doubt that this helps to understand the fight of feminists and black activists: why protest seating in a bus when you are welcomed into any university and any athletic team without bias? Re-writing history is in my opinion foolish and dangerous because it falsifies the very real problems of these times. One cannot learn from a history that one has remodelled according to one's fantasies.

This re-arrangement of history seems to lead to mirrored prejudices sometimes, and I think that has happened here, too: all villains are white males (and alien monsters, this is still Call of Cthulhu). The white guy among the student NSCs is "a caustic worm" while the jock is an utterly nice, helpful great person. Wait: a jock is nice, sociable and helpful? Not the stereotype! Great. Oh, wait: he is Afro-American. There is a local, son of a farmer who is not only accepted into the utterly un-snobbish student society but also knows all the cool places in town. I would not have guessed that they allowed poor people into the cool places back then.

I read this campaign as racist (anti-white rather than the historically correct and equally racist 'white only') and sexist (all evil people are men). I do not like that.

What I do not like either is the variation of the fertility cult because I do not like the combination of fertility cults and minors. That is not horror but disgusting in my take. There is a nice, horrific fertility cult (with adults) in many an old Chaosium publication. Why not use that?



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