D&D General Why a PETITION: Stop Hasbro's hurtful content is a Bad Idea

[Voadam]

I know they wouldn't do it, but it would be nice to see Wizards subcontract out different worlds to some major 3PPs, given how many settings they have in their pocket. Again, very unlikely, but would be a nice way of actually getting some of these worlds out of vault.

It is pretty unfortunate that Ghosts of Saltmarsh did not open all of Greyhawk up on DM's Guild. We could have had years of more people developing lots of Greyhawk stuff.

 

[Voadam]

We already know what they did last time: they stuck on a disclaimer. I feel like that trumps anything anyone else has done because that's Wizards of the Coast. They've gotten critiqued over not going far enough on Strahd Revamped, but as far as I can tell they haven't removed that in a fit of pique.

I feel like everyone treating them with kiddie gloves misses that occasionally they don't mess things up, and acting like every corporation will always overreact to any sort of critique just ends up as an excuse to never do anything, lest you lose it completely.

I am less sanguine about WotC's history with PDFs.

WotC started off saying putting out prior edition products as PDFs is a great idea and did a whole scanning and uploading program with a bunch for free and selling a bunch. About 2000 or so.

Then in the 4e era they changed their minds and with one day notice yanked all new PDF sales and authority to redownload ones they had sold as well.

Years later they changed their minds again and put them back up on DriveThru, but kept them off Paizo and to this day I cannot redownload any of the D&D PDFs I bought on Paizo.

A couple years ago Daniel Kwan did his youtube series with his analysis of a read through on Oriental Adventures and why he felt it was racist. He then started his social media push to get 1e OA pulled from sale. In response to this one person social media push that gathered some traction WotC put out the disclaimer on all old D&D PDFs for sale. There were huge threads on it here at the time.

I am glad WotC did not yank the products from sale or put the disclaimer in the PDFs themselves.

WotC did react to a one person social media push in the past with action. They have changed their minds in the past on how to handle PDFs, including by yanking all old ones.

I think the default is we continue to have access to stuff, but there are reasons to think that default is a bit shaky and subject to change.

 

[The Glen]

If you wanted to approach altering the book and still appeal to the old time fans then just go with a tonal shift. It was created during the TSR silly phase. Ethengar presents Mongol themed humanoids copying the human culture there seriously and that book is considered one of the better entries into the setting.

Redo the joke names by reusing the Voyage of the Princess Ark where Haldemar looked at the old maps from the boxed set, and basically went "who wrote this crap" and blamed everything on a lazy cartographer.

You will get more people to go along with this approach than a petition. Plus you can imagine a Thyatian explorer tasked with mapping the Broken Lands looking at a blasted wasteland of sulfer springs, quicksand and hostile humanoids and instead of actually doing his job just putting "Bugburbia" on the map and going to the next location.

 

[LordEntrails]

I am less sanguine about WotC's history with PDFs.

WotC started off saying putting out prior edition products as PDFs is a great idea and did a whole scanning and uploading program with a bunch for free and selling a bunch. About 2000 or so.

Then in the 4e era they changed their minds and with one day notice yanked all new PDF sales and authority to redownload ones they had sold as well.

Years later they changed their minds again and put them back up on DriveThru, but kept them off Paizo and to this day I cannot redownload any of the D&D PDFs I bought on Paizo.

A couple years ago Daniel Kwan did his youtube series with his analysis of a read through on Oriental Adventures and why he felt it was racist. He then started his social media push to get 1e OA pulled from sale. In response to this one person social media push that gathered some traction WotC put out the disclaimer on all old D&D PDFs for sale. There were huge threads on it here at the time.

I am glad WotC did not yank the products from sale or put the disclaimer in the PDFs themselves.

WotC did react to a one person social media push in the past with action. They have changed their minds in the past on how to handle PDFs, including by yanking all old ones.

I think the default is we continue to have access to stuff, but there are reasons to think that default is a bit shaky and subject to change.

Excellent re-cap, thank you!

 

[Cergorach]

I find the 'banning' (taken out of sale) or rewriting old documents a huge problem. That's bleaching the past imho. We might still know why it was rewritten, but in a generation or two people won't and that might be bad. Anywhere from repeating the past to denying the past.

Leaving old documents as they were when published is also a great learning tool about the past and current issues.

As an example, I read a lot and sometimes I read old stuff. Like the Destroyer series of books, the first one was written in 1963 (but published in 1971), written by two Americans. The series (150+ books) is certainly not politically correct, but it gave a good insight into American views in those decades (and how that translates to an action/pulp book series) and you see the writing change as time goes on. There are moments where you go "That's iffy at best!" or "Oof!", but it did connect a LOT of dots for me on American society were it came from where it is now and how we got here. I grew up on a LOT of (older) American TV series and Movies, but those are often like a lot of Movies and TV shows now, not always exactly representative.

Especially concerning the old D&D pdfs they are taking up virtually no space, so we're not wasting any paper there. Before this whole discussion I expect that there were maybe a few sales per month, but due to these two threads, sales might have spiked significantly!

Forcing another document to be downloaded with the original, I also find problematic. What I would find interesting is an analysis of each setting by product. My problem is how is it written... When I look at the linked document of Travis Henry, when I start reading, I quickly skip over the quotes, then have trouble reading through the first 'list'. I quickly get disinterested and scroll through the document and see/skim quite a bit of "Oof!" items in there, that might sway those that are not familiar with GAZ10 (like myself) that it's an offensive document. The document starts out in a way that might be fine for those that already have the same views as the author, but is a very annoying read for those that do not. Improve that and remove the CV from the end of the document.

 

[Thourne]

I find the 'banning' (taken out of sale) or rewriting old documents a huge problem. That's bleaching the past imho. We might still know why it was rewritten, but in a generation or two people won't and that might be bad. Anywhere from repeating the past to denying the past.

Leaving old documents as they were when published is also a great learning tool about the past and current issues.

As an example, I read a lot and sometimes I read old stuff. Like the Destroyer series of books, the first one was written in 1963 (but published in 1971), written by two Americans. The series (150+ books) is certainly not politically correct, but it gave a good insight into American views in those decades (and how that translates to an action/pulp book series) and you see the writing change as time goes on. There are moments where you go "That's iffy at best!" or "Oof!", but it did connect a LOT of dots for me on American society were it came from where it is now and how we got here. I grew up on a LOT of (older) American TV series and Movies, but those are often like a lot of Movies and TV shows now, not always exactly representative.

Especially concerning the old D&D pdfs they are taking up virtually no space, so we're not wasting any paper there. Before this whole discussion I expect that there were maybe a few sales per month, but due to these two threads, sales might have spiked significantly!

Forcing another document to be downloaded with the original, I also find problematic. What I would find interesting is an analysis of each setting by product. My problem is how is it written... When I look at the linked document of Travis Henry, when I start reading, I quickly skip over the quotes, then have trouble reading through the first 'list'. I quickly get disinterested and scroll through the document and see/skim quite a bit of "Oof!" items in there, that might sway those that are not familiar with GAZ10 (like myself) that it's an offensive document. The document starts out in a way that might be fine for those that already have the same views as the author, but is a very annoying read for those that do not. Improve that and remove the CV from the end of the document.

Man I hadn't thought about Remo in years.
Thx for the blast from the past.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The contents of the petition are so outrageous, that no reasonable person can think WotC would acquiesce to its demands. Therefore it seems like that it was designed for two things: To embarrass WotC and to get them to pull the product.

I find not so much WotC but rather Hasbro. It is in the title, nevermind the rest of the document!
The OP has been critical of Hasbro far more than WotC which is a strange look.

EDIT: It is like having an issue with a product from MSNBC and criticising the Comcast Corporation.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I find not so much WotC but rather Hasbro. The OP has been critical of Hasbro far more than WotC which is a strange look.

 

[Umbran]

I find the 'banning' (taken out of sale) or rewriting old documents a huge problem.

Things go out of print all the time. Keeping works available perpetually is a very recent development in the world of publishing. Our feeling of entitlement to old works is not yet supported by history.

 

[SteveC]

Things go out of print all the time. Keeping works available perpetually is a very recent development in the world of publishing. Our feeling of entitlement to old works is not yet supported by history.

This is so true! I was at a used bookstore recently look at books for my kiddo, and saw that they had some of the GAZ series in their gaming section. I think this is the first time I had seen any of these books in decades.

PDF availability has changed the game and offers availability forever. As much as I enjoy that, I think an argument can be made it's not necessarily a good thing. I have a lot of older RPGs that as I look at them in the present, there is a cringe factor for a lot of different reasons.