That wasn't the position I took.
However, I did offer some comment in response to that. I said that I can understand efforts to sanitize things which may upset people. I further commented that I'm curious how murdering sentient creatures for wealth and advancement fits into that.
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Edit: I can see how my position could be construed as that. I did say that it's irrelevant whether or not things are real to you and me. That comment was geared more toward what I perceived as logically valid (given a set of setting assumptions,) and explaining why my position was not a Thermian argument. (I would further posit that there is some argument for a Thermian Argument not being fallacious because being factual is not necessarily a requirement of being logically valid.)
Admittedly, I do think that -at some point- building a narrative around a fictional world requires some amount of willingness to leave real-world assumptions and expectation behind. As someone choosing to play a role inside of that same constructed fiction, I think there's an argument to be made for seeing through different eyes than your own. Yes, real-world feelings do matter. A product which is grossly offensive to players and customers is not good; at the same time, is there a point at which the game reaches what is essentially the 80s Satanic Panic with a different moral/ethical paint job?
In the context of a broader issue, I'm genuinely curious to see how design of a combat-and-conflict-centric game is approached in a way which objectively offends zero people. How would a brand with the strength (and market share) of contemporary D&D (backed by Hasbro) respond to the 80s Satanic Panic and Jack Chick?
The problem with your theoretical position of seeing this from the eyes of someone within the setting is that it assumes that someone within the setting, with full access to all the facts we have, would have a different reaction. And there are only two flavors of positions I can see differing from my own.
The first is "Those who do not worship the divine majesty of the Gods deserve what they get". And this position is... well it is bigotry and worse. It assumes that holding a different belief that harms no one is something deserving of punishment. Worse, since we are explicitly told ( in
Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad chapter 43 as referenced in an earlier post) that being insane does not exempt someone from the Wall, that means that this position also is that people with mental illnesses deserve to be punished.
That same quote from earlier (Alzrius post #
234 ) also shows us that Mystra doesn't think that is how things should work, which tells me that even in the Realms... that is kind of an extreme position.
The second position? "The gods do what they will, and we just need to keep our heads down." Which really smacks of Stockholme syndrome and just the acceptance that we are too weak to actually change anything. Which is a perfectly logical thing for a peasant to think. It isn't like they can travel to the Fugue plane and demand things from Kelemvor. But, reorienting back to us instead of them, we can change it. We are not powerless in the face of unfair gods, we are the ones holding the pen.
Also, an aside, I do not see "sanitizing DnD" as the "broader issue" in this thread. We are talking about the Wall. If you want to start a new thread wondering about how a combat game can be justified from a moral viewpoint, go ahead, but that has nothing to do with my objections to the Wall. Because, if we were in a setting like Theros, where the Gods are as much feared as revered, and the Wall had existed as a punishment since the beginning of time, used only to punish those who defied the Gods and invoked their wrath, then I'd be fine with it. Because the point there is that the Gods are terrible, taking the Ovid view that they are all petty tyrants who throw fits and punish languishing mortals for no good reason.
But that is not the thematic bedrock of FR.