We Call Them Cylons
February 17, 2022 10:04 AM Subscribe
Board game writer Dan Thurot offers a meditation on identity, 9/11, H.P. Lovecraft, and several board game adaptations that deal with these.
I haven't played BSG in a long time and haven't touched Unfathomable yet, but this was great. I will say just from osmosis I thought the cultists wanted to wait to get closer is because they can't swim very well so wanted the boat to crash but them be able to survive (as a justification for why they have to wait to win).
This touches on issues I have broadly too with the Cthulhu mythos though. It's really hard to imagine unimaginable horror, and then to contextualize it into points and dials and things that are knowable sands the sharp edges off. I know a lot of people love the setting and don't have that issue, but it has never drawn me in. This is to say nothing of treating illness as a game trait, and to have sanity be something normal and good.
posted by Carillon at 1:49 PM on February 17, 2022
This touches on issues I have broadly too with the Cthulhu mythos though. It's really hard to imagine unimaginable horror, and then to contextualize it into points and dials and things that are knowable sands the sharp edges off. I know a lot of people love the setting and don't have that issue, but it has never drawn me in. This is to say nothing of treating illness as a game trait, and to have sanity be something normal and good.
posted by Carillon at 1:49 PM on February 17, 2022
This was a good piece. I had been vaguely in the market for a more streamlined Battlestar Galactica, and Unfathomable seemed like it might be it when it blipped on the radar, but it is of course just another in a decades-long line of overengineered, over-Cthulhu'd, deck-mad Fantasy Flight plastic profligates, who are now nothing more than Jack Daniels next to the Jim Beam of Cool Mini Or Not.
Lovecraft's "cosmic horror" has of course long been difficult to take seriously thanks to the absolute dilution of its conceit by stuff like this, although it was fleetingly interesting when it was basically just Arkham Horror, which was unique, overcomplicated, had too many components, and was where FF lost the plot.
You know what's good though? For boardgames, Great Western Trail. For Cthulhu games, I'd argue the Delta Green TTRPG is as good as it gets these days.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:28 PM on February 17, 2022
Lovecraft's "cosmic horror" has of course long been difficult to take seriously thanks to the absolute dilution of its conceit by stuff like this, although it was fleetingly interesting when it was basically just Arkham Horror, which was unique, overcomplicated, had too many components, and was where FF lost the plot.
You know what's good though? For boardgames, Great Western Trail. For Cthulhu games, I'd argue the Delta Green TTRPG is as good as it gets these days.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:28 PM on February 17, 2022
For TTRPG, Chaosium is still putting out good supplements (Berlin: The Wicked City is arguably the best RPG book for Weimar Germany, period). But I'd also recommend Trail of Cthulhu, or, if you want more humor, CStross's own Laundry Files.
But frankly, I don't think there's a good cosmic horror board game. Part of that is because the monsters are really mere accessories to the true horror of a good mythos story: that the universe is bigger, weirder, and utterly immane to the human condition, and that comprehension of the true nature of reality is detrimental to human existence. Tentacles and vowel-hypersatured syllables are ultimately a distraction from that point.
And yes, HPL was a horrid horrid racist. But a part of why his writing persists, I would argue, is the queer subtext of his writing. To illustrate my argument, consider both his greatest and his worst ending passages: by which I mean the ending of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and the ending of "Medusa's Coil".
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" ends with the author's discovery that he too is secretly one of the deep one hybrids, that his transformation has begun, and that he will soon be going into the sea. And it's feverish- ecstatic- enthusiastic.
"Medusa's Coil" for it's absolutely horrid ending twist, spends a lot f time layering up the incredible allure of the femme fatale character. Another example might be some of the parts of "The Thing on the Doorstep".
And what I'm suggesting by all this is that there's also an eroticism and queerness underneath the surface of the revulsion. There's a sweaty, in-denial eagerness to talk about the "Black Goat with a Thousand Young" and the "raping and shouting and killing without shame". Reading H.P. Lovecraft's narration sometimes carries without the frisson of an embarrassing wank- that moment when you're enjoying something that you shouldn't ethically enjoy but that you do nonetheless.
And I think it's that abrupt conflict between the racist supertext and the erotic subtext that gives Lovecraft's writing a part of it's power. Like many homophobes and racists, I suspect that he secretly craved what he publicly reviled, and that his power as a horror writer comes from his psychological dysfunction- Lovecraft's writing has loathing wrestling with longing. It's that unspoken dialectic, in my opinion, which makes his work so interesting. It's stuff that a healthy, well-adjusted, non-repressed author would never be able to write.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 4:01 PM on February 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
But frankly, I don't think there's a good cosmic horror board game. Part of that is because the monsters are really mere accessories to the true horror of a good mythos story: that the universe is bigger, weirder, and utterly immane to the human condition, and that comprehension of the true nature of reality is detrimental to human existence. Tentacles and vowel-hypersatured syllables are ultimately a distraction from that point.
And yes, HPL was a horrid horrid racist. But a part of why his writing persists, I would argue, is the queer subtext of his writing. To illustrate my argument, consider both his greatest and his worst ending passages: by which I mean the ending of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and the ending of "Medusa's Coil".
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" ends with the author's discovery that he too is secretly one of the deep one hybrids, that his transformation has begun, and that he will soon be going into the sea. And it's feverish- ecstatic- enthusiastic.
"Medusa's Coil" for it's absolutely horrid ending twist, spends a lot f time layering up the incredible allure of the femme fatale character. Another example might be some of the parts of "The Thing on the Doorstep".
And what I'm suggesting by all this is that there's also an eroticism and queerness underneath the surface of the revulsion. There's a sweaty, in-denial eagerness to talk about the "Black Goat with a Thousand Young" and the "raping and shouting and killing without shame". Reading H.P. Lovecraft's narration sometimes carries without the frisson of an embarrassing wank- that moment when you're enjoying something that you shouldn't ethically enjoy but that you do nonetheless.
And I think it's that abrupt conflict between the racist supertext and the erotic subtext that gives Lovecraft's writing a part of it's power. Like many homophobes and racists, I suspect that he secretly craved what he publicly reviled, and that his power as a horror writer comes from his psychological dysfunction- Lovecraft's writing has loathing wrestling with longing. It's that unspoken dialectic, in my opinion, which makes his work so interesting. It's stuff that a healthy, well-adjusted, non-repressed author would never be able to write.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 4:01 PM on February 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
I really appreciated reading this; thanks.
posted by brainwane at 9:03 PM on February 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by brainwane at 9:03 PM on February 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
It is a piece with, as meinvt says above, a pretty small audience. However, all the likely candidates among my circle to read this have appreciated having it brought to their attention.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:30 PM on February 17, 2022
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:30 PM on February 17, 2022
Arkham Horror, which was unique, overcomplicated, had too many components
Arkham Horror has many issues, but what I do think it captured about the genre was the hopeless struggle by all of the players against impossible odds. The Lord of the Rings boardgame by Reiner Knizia and even War of the Ring by Ares Games also transcend the limitations of their game engines to evoke the plight of the Free Peoples and the hopelessness of war.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 8:29 AM on February 18, 2022
Arkham Horror has many issues, but what I do think it captured about the genre was the hopeless struggle by all of the players against impossible odds. The Lord of the Rings boardgame by Reiner Knizia and even War of the Ring by Ares Games also transcend the limitations of their game engines to evoke the plight of the Free Peoples and the hopelessness of war.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 8:29 AM on February 18, 2022
I'm struggling to find motivation for why these Others are really bad. Maybe that's it, you can tell you are gaming with fascists because the model is in-group versus out-group and the 'sanitary' in-group are on their way to being replaced by something dreadful. Or it's a way for fascists to learn that The Other Was Us All Along or There But for the Grace of God Go I.
Relevant for the question of Game Context: When Lovecraft was writing, we didn't have The Big Bang (scientific consensus popularised in the 1950s). The Heat Death of the Cosmos (underlying thermodynamics was early C.20 and popularised 1930s) wasn't that much of a thing. With an unchanging eternal cosmos, things Out There were always unfathomable Greater Powers -- but a Big Bang cosmology swaps them from being motivated agents to rails of the machinery. Your mortality against the cold loneliness of space isn't the game I want to play.
posted by k3ninho at 9:54 AM on February 18, 2022
Relevant for the question of Game Context: When Lovecraft was writing, we didn't have The Big Bang (scientific consensus popularised in the 1950s). The Heat Death of the Cosmos (underlying thermodynamics was early C.20 and popularised 1930s) wasn't that much of a thing. With an unchanging eternal cosmos, things Out There were always unfathomable Greater Powers -- but a Big Bang cosmology swaps them from being motivated agents to rails of the machinery. Your mortality against the cold loneliness of space isn't the game I want to play.
posted by k3ninho at 9:54 AM on February 18, 2022
He makes a good point about “theme” as a layer of paint vs. “theme” as embedded in the game structure and actions.
I got into games because I enjoy the puzzley aspects and the interactions of game mechanic. I’ve never really been into story or theme. Maybe that’s because a paint-deep story is just not very interesting.
I first started thinking about story mostly when I had a few friends that didn’t want to play Puerto Rico anymore, even though we all liked the game mechanic. But if story is only paint-deep you can just reskin. Consider the excellent Race for the Galaxy.
The problem is that it’s not just skin deep. PR, San Juan and even RFTG have a settler-colonialist mindset in their actual actions, too. You, the player, are the overlord who decides who works where, extracting resources out of locations with no need to think about how it affects those locations. Obviously board games are actually “just a game”— but many of the people in power in extractive industries also view it as a kind of game, and think of the little people under them as tiny cylinders with no humanity. It’s a weird echo.
posted by nat at 12:00 PM on February 18, 2022
I got into games because I enjoy the puzzley aspects and the interactions of game mechanic. I’ve never really been into story or theme. Maybe that’s because a paint-deep story is just not very interesting.
I first started thinking about story mostly when I had a few friends that didn’t want to play Puerto Rico anymore, even though we all liked the game mechanic. But if story is only paint-deep you can just reskin. Consider the excellent Race for the Galaxy.
The problem is that it’s not just skin deep. PR, San Juan and even RFTG have a settler-colonialist mindset in their actual actions, too. You, the player, are the overlord who decides who works where, extracting resources out of locations with no need to think about how it affects those locations. Obviously board games are actually “just a game”— but many of the people in power in extractive industries also view it as a kind of game, and think of the little people under them as tiny cylinders with no humanity. It’s a weird echo.
posted by nat at 12:00 PM on February 18, 2022
What does the author mean by "arch" in "Otherwise this is a banal sort of evil, existing to arch humanity for the sake of arching them"?
posted by mpark at 3:39 PM on February 18, 2022
posted by mpark at 3:39 PM on February 18, 2022
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posted by meinvt at 11:16 AM on February 17, 2022 [3 favorites]