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

[overgeeked]

Out of interest do DS fans have a "Pandius" like Mystara fans have?

The Burnt World of Athas

athas.org

 

[Staffan]

In this case, it’s actual fans of the hobby, who support the hobby with both time and money, telling you that including slavery, one of the most evil bits of our shared history, the effects of which we are still dealing with today, is not something we want to see in our pretend elf game. We don’t want this product and we won’t buy it.

This is probably the most important part of this discussion, at least from Wizards' perspective.

There are a lot of people for whom slavery is an issue that hits a lot closer to home than it does to someone like me (a white dude who lives in Sweden). The last person born into slavery in the US died in 1972, only 51 years ago. The after-effects of slavery are still felt today in the US, both economic and political (and I think that's about as far as the forum rules would let me go). Some of the people affected would feel very uncomfortable playing in a setting where slavery is a central focus. These would not buy the setting, and many of them would be very vocal about why, creating bad publicity. This makes Dark Sun a losing proposition for Wizards, and that means that it makes little sense for Wizards to spend resources developing a 5e version of the setting when they could instead spend those resources on something else. This is not an issue of morality, but of business. No-one is owed a new version of Dark Sun.

But, I hear you say (not you, @Hussar, the generic you), there's slavery all over the place in D&D. You have places like Thay, or monstrous races like mind flayers or duergar! But to that I say that here's a difference between "This evil country over there keeps slaves and that's one of the reasons they are the villains" and "Slavery is a central focus of the setting." Thay is the former, Dark Sun is the latter. The intro adventure in the original Dark Sun boxed set has the PCs start out as slaves. When they are freed by a tribe of elves out for vengeance against the slave traders, the elves do not care one whit about the PCs, but instead leave them to fend for themselves in the desert, so the PCs go from slavery to possible starvation. That's harsh, but that's how Dark Sun is. And I wouldn't have it any other way, which means it's not a commercially viable product today.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Interesting read, this thread.

For me, I think one question about including 'problematic' or difficult material into a published gaming setting comes to two things: 1) We all know about mind flayers taking slaves, for example - why do you need it spelled out in the work? and 2) what is this supposed to mean in terms of the work?

I feel, with my limited experience with Dark Sun, all of the slavery was just piling on the theme about what a 'savage' and 'dark' and broken world this was. Do we need slaves to prove that point? I don't feel nessecerily that changing them from 'slaves' to 'voluntarily indentured servants' really makes it better, because we would seem to be trading one, very real Bad Thing for another set of real life situations (For example, I have zero doubt I will literally have to work until the day I die, and I don't think that's just my cynical nature)

Leaving slavery, or addiction, or other difficult topics out, and letting each individual table decide for themselves what works would seem to be the easiest option. It's the same about boundaries and using X-cards at tables - I know several people who are all in for dark things in horror games, unless it involves children even off-screen. I was running a post-apocalyptic game where the party was ambushed by freezing, starving waifs... who then attacked. About two sentences in, I realized my mistake before it was brought up and was able to turn it that they were attacked actually by starving halflings who had disguised themselves as human children.

TLDR - leave the stuff out. If any table wants to add it in, let them.

 

[Faolyn]

This is an argument Pat Pulling made when claiming D&D was harmful to children. Do you have a cite from any credible mental health expert showing the harm D&D has done over the years?

Where have I ever claimed that it's caused harm?

You still haven't named any form of entertainment that makes you the slave. When I play a wizard in D&D, I am most emphatically not the wizard.

But you're playing one. Presumably, you have a background and personality for that character that you put effort and thought into--far more than you would have if you had passively watched a TV show or movie.

I take it, if your character dies, you have zero feelings about it at all?

Abe from Oddworld
In Trial of Champions within the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks
Divinity: Original Sin 2 features a playable character, Sebille, who was a slave

I specifically included video games.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is a notable difference. This allusion to the Satanic Panic keeps making the rounds like it’s some sort of slam dunk argument.

Those promoting the satanic panic were not and never were going to be part of the hobby or the fandom. These were people, woefully misinformed, promoting a big pack of false information in order to force people who had nothing to do with them, to follow their beliefs.

In this case, it’s actual fans of the hobby, who support the hobby with both time and money, telling you that including slavery, one of the most evil bits of our shared history, the effects of which we are still dealing with today, is not something we want to see in our pretend elf game. We don’t want this product and we won’t buy it.

I do agree that this is a real distinction. The satanic for the most part was coming from outside the hobby and this is more of a fault line within the hobby. But I do think you are oversimplifying the conclusion. Yes there are some people saying what you are saying here, but that is far from what everyone in the hobby is saying, and there are many positions here along a spectrum. For me, I think the evils of history are fair game for a fantasy RPG setting (especially a dark and dystopian one like Dark Sun). It isn't for everyone, and WOTC doesn't have to make such a setting, but I do think there is an appetite for settings that deal with that kind of subject matter.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is an argument Pat Pulling made when claiming D&D was harmful to children. Do you have a cite from any credible mental health expert showing the harm D&D has done over the years?

I don't think that is Faolyn's position. Rather I think Faolyn is saying that the immersive nature of RPGs means any feelings the subject matter might evoke will be that much more intense for people.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You watch a movie involving slavery, you are a passive participant. You play a game involving slavery, you are an active participant. People have pointed out that the first DS module involved the PCs being slaves. In other words, you were a slave.

Name one other type of entertainment that makes you the slave. Or the slave owner.

Most other types of entertainment, except perhaps video games (which I know almost nothing about so I can't weigh in there) are through the eyes of a protagonist, not yourself. But you still immerse in that character's experience, and I've read plenty of stories where characters were slaves or became enslaved, and seen many movies with that as a plot point (I mentioned Spartacus before but there are plenty of others). Also it is a common thing to see in fantasy because fantasy is informed by a lot of ancient history (just take the movie Conan the Barbarian where he starts out into slavery as a gladiator because his village is massacred by Thusla Doom).

 

[Warpiglet-7]

This is an argument Pat Pulling made when claiming D&D was harmful to children. Do you have a cite from any credible mental health expert showing the harm D&D has done over the years?

You still haven't named any form of entertainment that makes you the slave. When I play a wizard in D&D, I am most emphatically not the wizard. When my character kills a kobold I have not killed a kobold. When my wizard dies I have not died. Why? Because I am not my character. Like Pat Pulling, you're arguing that people who play RPGs can't tell the difference between fiction and reality. This is an argument popular in the 1980s that most of us laugh at now because it's so absurd.

The literature on rpg playing and personality/behavior is not that robust. The extant literature has usually found some positive things are related to rpg playing. Of course such studies are usually correlational in nature; not a bunch of controlled experiments.

There is no evidence that playing a mercenary warlord is correlated with violent behavior that I have ever heard of.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I don’t know what the current fan base is. But if anime fans are among them, most anime fans I know are used to much more intense content than Dark Sun (anime obviously varies a lot so that can vary too)

I think this has stumbled upon what some people find "problematic". There's a concerningly common trope in "isekai" (people from the real world finding themselves in a fantasy world, usually permanently) for slavery to not only be an institution practiced by society, but for the hero to participate in it and have slaves that grow to like him. Perhaps the most prominent of these is Rising of the Shield Hero, in which the protagonist not only buys a slave, but later comes back and buys a second one from the same person, and then again patronizes the slave dealer to buy a monster egg. Unless something happens later that I'm unaware of the protagonist doesn't seem to have any qualms about buying slaves and doing business with the slave trader (who operates in the open, btw).

WotC is probably (rightly, IMO) afraid to publish a setting with institutional slavery that exists beyond whatever the mindflayers or neogi are up to because some proportion of games will feature PCs buying slaves. Even if the DM later intends to make the slave buying PCs face a comeuppance its still not a good look for a game that is constantly being scrutinized for problematic content and trying to avoid controversy (especially since when it does happen, like with the hadozee last year, people will start sharing everything ever published related to it without context for who wrote it when and if it's still canon).

Personally if I ever run a Dark Sun campaign I will 100% feature not only slavery, but the near futility of trying to oppose it due to how virtually hopeless fixing Athas is. If I don't think a group would be okay with that I won't run Dark Sun. I still wouldn't allow PCs to participate in the institution, though.

 

[Faolyn]

There is a notable difference. This allusion to the Satanic Panic keeps making the rounds like it’s some sort of slam dunk argument.

Those promoting the satanic panic were not and never were going to be part of the hobby or the fandom. These were people, woefully misinformed, promoting a big pack of false information in order to force people who had nothing to do with them, to follow their beliefs.

In this case, it’s actual fans of the hobby, who support the hobby with both time and money, telling you that including slavery, one of the most evil bits of our shared history, the effects of which we are still dealing with today, is not something we want to see in our pretend elf game. We don’t want this product and we won’t buy it.

There really isn’t much of a comparison here. You are being told, quite honestly, that things like slavery make people in the hobby, who are every bit as important to the hobby as you, make us uncomfortable and feel unwelcome.

So, at the end of the day, which is more important to you? To me, it’s more important that people feel welcome in the hobby. I don’t need a thirty year old setting to get reprinted knowing that that reprint is going to make others in the hobby feel like they’re not welcome.

We’ve done that quite enough throughout the history of the hobby.

You want Dark Sun? It’s all right there in pdf format. Every bit of published material for your enjoyment. But I do t feel that it is appropriate for WotC to actively support that line knowing that it will make chunks of the fandom unhappy.

To add to this, an example:

A friend and I co-created a setting (we brainstormed together, I did most of the writing). I wrote several of the cultures to have slavery, or something that's slavery in all but name. And I could do this because I know my group well enough to know where the limits are and to not attempt to cross them. He's running the game now and we've had our fourth session this last Friday. One of the characters is an ex-slave.

WotC doesn't know what my limits are, and they don't know what anyone else's limits are. The original Dark Sun actually crossed my limits (and I have a dark, horror-aspected mind), because of the sex slavery, which is treated so banally even though it's something that still goes on today, and is something that few people other than myself have brought up in these Dark Sun threads.

So you (not you, Hussar) may be OK with slavery because you're an adult, you can take it--but do you know the limits of your players? Do you think WotC knows the limits of your players? Or of my players? Or of anyone's players?