D&D General The Art and the Artist: Discussing Problematic Issues in D&D

[HammerMan]

They can be. Very often science fiction writers will use aliens as stand ins to write about human issues. And there's always the plausible deniability that comes with doing so. Nah, the Klingons are aliens. Their relationship with the Federation in no way mirrors the Soviet Union's relationship with the United States and the episode "A Private Little War" has nothing to do with third world nations caught between those competing super powers.

right but in my post... the one he quoted (but cut parts) I said I don't want to use real world groups, so instead I am useing fantasy names as stand ins

 

[Krachek]

Mod Note:
The "-phobia" in the term is a colloquial use, not an actual mental health diagnosis.

Also, as already noted, while she is an example of a problematic author, she is not an author of RPG materials. Please bring things around to gaming-relevance, please.

So we can imagine in DnD the various reactions of NPCs facing characters who have been reincarnated or true polymorphed, changing race, creature type. We can have the same situation with clone, resurrection.
our modern technology lead us slowly toward those magic incredible results, and some will obviously need help to afford that.
DnD slowly prepare people to wonders!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think you have a good point that an artist's intentions can add a lot to an audience's experience and critique.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

However, I would note that we don't always have access to an artist's intentions. And even when we do have access to their letters, journals, discussions, etc., that's still only a small glimpse into a complex mind and experience.

Absolutely. I am not saying you will ever have 100% certainty about an artist's intentions, nor am I saying there can't be valuable interpretations of their work outside their intent. And the availability of primary source material from the author will always vary, in some cases be non-existent. But I think something to consider is there are different approaches here. A lot of posters seem to have a media studies, critical studies or literary studies mindset. My background is history. In history, at least at the time I studied it, shortly after the end of the linguistic turn, intent was our focus. It wasn't the only thing. Context mattered. But I think when you come from that kind of background, you approach these things differently than someone coming at it from say a literary studies background. I tend to be very cautious, very slow, and very measured in forming my opinions about what the intentions and meaning of a document is (especially if we are talking about that in terms of something like racial and cultural issue and not simply what an RPG books meaning is in terms of how many d10s you roll). And to me figuring out the intent, assessing what the culture was like when it came, etc, those are very important to me. And I will be able to do more with some writers and designers than others because some left a bigger paper trail.

But let's imagine we could magically know exactly what an artist's intentions were. An audience member's perspective, even when it differs from an artist's intention, is still valid. Art lives in that strange space between an artist's intention and the audience experience.

I don't 100% agree with this. I do think you have your genuine reaction and that is real. However I think if you are making a moral assessment about the work, what the author intended really does matter. Now you can also consider how people overall interpreted it. For example if a game designer made a joke that anyone who likes dice pools should be burned at the stake-----you not understanding it was a joke, and assuming he literally wanted to light dice pool fans on fire, would be an invalid interpretation. However if he expressed it so poorly that the majority of gamers shared your interpretation and launched an inquisition to burn alive any who dared to dice pool, then that I think that is where stuff like the impact has to be considered (even if that wasn't the author's intent).

This means that the same piece of art can mean vastly different things to you and me. And neither of our experiences are invalid.

Sure. I mean think this is fair. We going to find much different meaning in the same book. I still think though, there are better and worse analysis of the book. If we both read the 1st edition DMG, and I come away saying it "It was a riveting manual on airplane construction" and you said "It was a guide to running an RPG", your interoperation and reaction would be more valid. On the other hand if my reaction was "A magnificent book!" and yours was "A terrible book!", sure both valid reaction because those are subjective responses.

We can then say, "You think A, and I think B. Based on what we know about the artist, does that change our perspectives at all?"

This is hard to answer without specifics. But I think what we know about the artist can change both of our perspectives, and it can also shed light on who is closer to the intended meaning of the work. Again, I think people weigh intent differently. I tend to rate it very high. And so I would advocate for factoring in intent with this stuff.

To me, that's where the richest discussions come in.

But none of that can happen if we waste our time saying, "Your perspective is not valid."

And again if we are talking about you loved the movie or book because of X, and I hated it because of Y, sure. That is fair. On the other hand, if you and I see the same movie and one of us says it is morally bad, perhaps that one of us is morally bad if we like and defend it, or don't see the moral badness of it, I think intent really becomes important. It isn't the only thing. Something can be unintentionally morally bad (though I would argue that is less bad usually than something that is intentionally so). But if you are arguing it is bad because it is saying X, then yes, we definitely need to figure out if the author was trying to say X or not.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Dueling anecdotes are not going to get us anywhere useful.

True. However, anecdotes about some people being harmed are (if true) proof of harm.

Anecdotes of some people not being harmed are (if true) not proof of the absence of harm.

So some anecdotes are more useful than others.

 

[Bill Zebub]

One thing I try to do is lewd by example,

Best typo ever.

 

[Lyxen]

True. However, anecdotes about some people being harmed are (if true) proof of harm.

Anecdotes of some people not being harmed are (if true) not proof of the absence of harm.

So some anecdotes are more useful than others.

"if true"... And also, assuming a certain definition of "harm", and another, greater one of "significant harm". Definitions that I still have not received.

Second, I'm sorry, but I don't agree with your principle. If I buy a kitchen knife, or even a fork, and harm myself by using it, is it really the fault of the knife ? It all depends as to HOW you are using it. Evidence of the majority of people over the world not being harmed by kitchen knife is not trumped by the few harming themselves with it, and even in the US, I don't think that people are suing firms producing kitchen knives.

Now, some knives are way more dangerous than others, and some knives are actually so dangerous as being forbidden in some countries, so it's normal to be vigilant about knives.

Also, pardon my french, but isn't it "countryist" (i'm sure there is a proper term) to assume that whatever notion of "harm" this is (assuming that we see it someday), it is representative of the gaming community all over the world ? That what constitutes harm there (and does not almost everywhere else in the world) takes preponderance ?

 

[BookTenTiger]

Best typo ever.

Are you sure it was a typo? (Wink, wink)

 

[HammerMan]

True. However, anecdotes about some people being harmed are (if true) proof of harm.

Anecdotes of some people not being harmed are (if true) not proof of the absence of harm.

So some anecdotes are more useful than others.

interesting though. why would anecdotes be more useful when they are in your favor? Now this also leads to my favorite joke that "The plural of anecdote isn't evidence... but it is, because with enough (normally alot) of anecdotes you can make a testable survey of how many times something can happen"

 

[Vaalingrade]

It's almost like sociological and emotional harm were difficult to quantify

 

[Mannahnin]

I don't 100% agree with this. I do think you have your genuine reaction and that is real. However I think if you are making a moral assessment about the work, what the author intended really does matter.

Sure. As a couple of D&D-specific examples, I often think of the multi-racial adventuring party as a core D&D concept from the beginning as a positive example, and Gary's response to complications of the young in the lairs in the Caves of Chaos as a negative one.

BOTH things represent ideas Gygax put forward implicitly, rather than explicitly.

One is an archetype of a diverse group of heroes, from different backgrounds, with different skills, working together to fight evil and achieve things they couldn't do separately. In this area, early D&D (and this has been carried through, for the most part consistently, to the present day) implicitly presents a great pro-teamwork, "diversity is strength" message. Everyone, of every race, can contribute. To some extent this is borrowed from Tolkien, but it's a great borrowing, and became central to what D&D IS for most folks.

The other is more problematic. We have a scenario where the players are presented as working out of/protecting a bastion of law and civilization against encroaching evil hordes of chaos. But the way in which they are expected to "protect" that place is to go to the homes and lairs of the uncivilized baddies, some miles down the road and into a canyon off the beaten path, put the savages to the sword and take their stuff. And complicating this further is the presence of noncombatant women and kids in those caves. I think Gygax originally put them there out of a desire for verisimilitude. These are living, breathing creatures, who reproduce by bearing and rearing young, so you'd expect them to be present in their homes. But they introduce a moral dilemma which he apparently didn't think through very well or want to grapple with. I suspect that's why he resorted to the awful justifications he did in that discussion thread in 2005, probably not even examining his own prejudices and prior assumptions re: the normality and acceptability of Col. Chivington and his men killing NA women and kids, or his rationale being one that was borrowed from similar atrocities inflicted on the Irish by the colonial English.

So, here we have two very different, but valid, messages people can take away from two of the most popular and foundational D&D products of all time- the core rules vs. what is probably the most-published module ever printed, which was sold in the Holmes and Moldvay Basic sets for years, Ryan Dancey in 1999 estimating a total print run "easily in excess of a million and a half units".