D&D 5E Dark Sun, problematic content, and 5E…

[Shardstone]

looks at the thread topic and the OP

I guess I’m a bit confused as to why people seem to think talking about home games is relevant then.

I'm referring to material I plan to publish myself, but also, arguing against a specific point someone made earlier in the thread, as many people in this thread have done for many specific points adjacent to the main topic.

 

[Mark Hope]

People didn't care about people who were bothered by slavery back then. We've evolved.

Not true. Many of us did (and do) care. We dedicated our lives and careers to fighting this kind of injustice. Respectfully, you are not qualified to make generalisations like this. Please stop.

 

[MGibster]

So that makes it all okay then? We sanitize the violence so it’s perfectly acceptable to sanitize everything else too?

Pretty much, yeah. If you'd like to argue otherwise, feel free, but I think you'd be walking an untenable path there to explain why it's okay to trivialize one thing and not another. Maybe one doesn't make you uncomfortable and the other does, but that's a question of preference not a moral position.

 

[Umbran]

Pretty much, yeah. If you'd like to argue otherwise, feel free, but I think you'd be walking an untenable path there to explain why it's okay to trivialize one thing and not another.

Oh, there's at least one basic reason why we can accept trivializing violence, but not other harms... Because human beings are not actually strongly driven by logic and a need for consistency.

When speaking about our fictions, the question doesn't have to be viewed in terms of ethical philosophy, and can instead be considered in terms of impact of fiction.

Since the audience doesn't react to all harms similarly, it matters which ones you trivialize.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I’m not a MTG player but I have been reading a lot about Phyrexians lately as inspiration for my Spelljammer campaign. What’s the problem with Phyrexians in DnD?

Being perfectly honest? They're intense body horror, in a way that is pretty explicitly insidious, often impossible to spot until it is already too late, and overtly evil in nearly all cases with a strong side of "The Virus"-style mind control. The only debatable faction of the Phyrexians is the Red faction, because Red is in some sense the antithesis of the turbo-fascist ideology that Phyrexia represents: it's the color of emotion, chaos, freedom, love, self-hood (as opposed to self-interest, as Red is theoretically the color of friendship too), etc.

There's a lot you can do with them, but making them explicitly part of the D&D universe would be Kind Of A Problem for a number of people I know. Mostly those who have survived abuse (Phyrexians are straight-up allegories for abusers) or who deal with gender dysphoria (since the whole "compleation" concept straight-up makes you something other than what you identify as, and then forces you to identify as that new thing.) Now, add in the fact that they're outright turbo-fascists and moreover implicitly turbo-fascist religious fanatics (Elesh Norn, de facto leader of New Phyrexia, is White-centered as opposed to the Black-centered leadership of the original Phyrexia.) It's not hard to see how this could be a touchy subject for a variety of people.

 

[Lanefan]

Any player in a game of mine who decided their PC wanted to buy slaves for their personal convenience, or set themselves as a slave trader, or who treated the slaves of a defeated enemy as loot, would be quickly informed as to where the door was and instructed to make use of it.

I guess you wouldn't approve of the party I had early in my current campaign, then - the party who as a result of an internal firefight over selling prisoners as slaves tied up two PCs (!) and gave them to some slavers for free. (which contact also served to nicely kick off running my version of the old A-series Slavers dungeons).

Maybe it's because we're not American and thus are farther removed from the recent history of it all, but when running a game set in faux-ancient-Greece or faux-ancient-Rome slavery as a societal norm just goes with the territory; and a PC being an ex-slaver (or ex-slave!) is just as likely as a PC being an ex-baker or ex-jeweller or ex-any number of other professions.

That's the real problem. I'm sympathetic to the 'slavery exists to be fought' argument, but with player freedom of action in an open world, dilemmas like this come up all the time.

Meh - if that's what the players want to do, that's what I'll run.

 

[humble minion]

Maybe it's because we're not American and thus are farther removed from the recent history of it all, but when running a game set in faux-ancient-Greece or faux-ancient-Rome slavery as a societal norm just goes with the territory; and a PC being an ex-slaver (or ex-slave!) is just as likely as a PC being an ex-baker or ex-jeweller or ex-any number of other professions.

I’m not American either.

For me it’s fairly simple. I don’t DM games with evil PCs. I’ve decreed that PCs who have crossed a moral event horizon have become NPCs before, and I’d have no compunction in doing it again.

If you want a pc with an ex-slavery or even ex-slaver background, fine. If you want a PC who is a current slaver, then that’s a no, just as if you’d wanted a PC who was a current serial killer.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Let's remember even if WotC published a totally "clean" DS book, and and almost players were "nice" in their games, in the internet age with rule34 and where even there is NSFW content of ¡my little pony! DS would be too "apetizing" for certain pervert no-fandom minds.

The origin of "50 shadows of Gregory" was adult fan-fiction with the main characters of "Twighlight" saga. You should guess the potential risk if the worst "jump the shark", becoming an ersatz of Gor saga.

WotC could publish new novels, comics and even a videogame (I would bet for the genre survival, something style Walheim, the Forest, Grounded or Conan Exiles) but there are some risks by fault of toxic creators if DS is unlocked in DMGuild.

Any other option? To be licenced to a serious 3PP, for example Renegade Games or Onyx Path, but it wouldn't be necessary because the key is to allowd the unlocking in DM Guild.

Any other idea? A almost reboot of the setting where time-travelers from the future altered the past, avoiding the worst damage in the ecological system and the genocides of the cleasing wars. But it is not a complete happy end because the sorcerer-kings created a demiplane to save their own timeline. Then the apocalypse hasn't been avoided totally but only delayed. The irony is souls of the evil people are sent to the distopian demiplane, and the souls of the innocent can reincarnated in the utopian timeline.

 

[Hussar]

I guess you wouldn't approve of the party I had early in my current campaign, then - the party who as a result of an internal firefight over selling prisoners as slaves tied up two PCs (!) and gave them to some slavers for free. (which contact also served to nicely kick off running my version of the old A-series Slavers dungeons).

Maybe it's because we're not American and thus are farther removed from the recent history of it all, but when running a game set in faux-ancient-Greece or faux-ancient-Rome slavery as a societal norm just goes with the territory; and a PC being an ex-slaver (or ex-slave!) is just as likely as a PC being an ex-baker or ex-jeweller or ex-any number of other professions.

Meh - if that's what the players want to do, that's what I'll run.

Hang on, am I reading that right? Your players actually attacked other players, and then gave those PC's to slavers because some of your players wanted to sell prisoners as slaves?

OMG. Seriously?

Yes, I think it would be fair to say that I would not approve of that group and I would be out the door incredibly fast. That's just... ick.

That has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with not being American.

 

[Hussar]

Being perfectly honest? They're intense body horror, in a way that is pretty explicitly insidious, often impossible to spot until it is already too late, and overtly evil in nearly all cases with a strong side of "The Virus"-style mind control. The only debatable faction of the Phyrexians is the Red faction, because Red is in some sense the antithesis of the turbo-fascist ideology that Phyrexia represents: it's the color of emotion, chaos, freedom, love, self-hood (as opposed to self-interest, as Red is theoretically the color of friendship too), etc.

There's a lot you can do with them, but making them explicitly part of the D&D universe would be Kind Of A Problem for a number of people I know. Mostly those who have survived abuse (Phyrexians are straight-up allegories for abusers) or who deal with gender dysphoria (since the whole "compleation" concept straight-up makes you something other than what you identify as, and then forces you to identify as that new thing.) Now, add in the fact that they're outright turbo-fascists and moreover implicitly turbo-fascist religious fanatics (Elesh Norn, de facto leader of New Phyrexia, is White-centered as opposed to the Black-centered leadership of the original Phyrexia.) It's not hard to see how this could be a touchy subject for a variety of people.

Thanks for that @ExekielRaiden. I honestly have only kinda skimmed the MtG lore on this. I got the whole Borg, body horror thing. But, honestly, had not really thought much about the deeper implications of it. Thank you for giving me something to think about and possibly bring up with my players before I decide to use it.

Like I said, I was very surface skimming stuff. I found a neat GM's Binder version of Phyrexia for D&D and it had lots of interesting goodies. I thought it would fit nicely in my Spelljammer game actually. HRm... will have to cogitate on this a bit more.