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

[Hussar]

How do people think this would play out? If WotC did DS, it would be a big release. Money spent on promoting the product and probably an Adventurer’s League season. Where a bunch of strangers play together.

Hrm. Me, generic white dude DMs a table of strangers, including POC where I’m playing the slave master and the players are slaves trying to escape.

Oh yeah. That won’t ever be a problem.

Or, WotC releases the setting into the wild for other creatives to work with. When interviewed about this decision WotC tells Eva that the reason they did so was because of the potential problems with the setting and they want to distance themselves from it but still tacitly support others, allowing them to publish works centrally featuring slavery and whatnot.

Again does anyone think this would go well?

 

[Hussar]

Oh and just a point about history. I live in a country that had institutionalize slavery …oh sorry… forced labour and institutionalized sex slavery in living memory. As in the victims of this are still alive.

This isn’t a solely American issue at all.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

Discretion shot. Mindflayer sins & war crimes have them, Athas doesn't. Even when those things are "on screen" for an adventure with mind flayers it's almost cartoon violence levels of evil. The good guys fighting them get to punch out & take a vacation when they finish with a conclusive win. Athas is a world that should have crossed the despair event horizon, and it has for many of its inhabitants, even for many of those clinging to scraps of power in the world's darkest hour. A hero in Athas doesn't get to punch out because they need to make hard choices and maintain every inch of improvement they make in the world.

It's not simply "spelled out", navigating that darkest hour knowing that simply beating this bad guy won't result in the sun coming out tomorrrow to a bright & colorful world is the focus. That means that the heroes in Athas don't get to punch out & declare that everything's good simply because they killed this badguy, Instead they need to actively maintain whatever good they accomplish because nobody has time to vcare they you did something good at some point in the past when they have all of these immediate problems.

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.

Isekai tends to be fairly light shonen (ie early teens), especially the ones you note. It's a far cry from things like grave of the fireflies plastic memories goblinslayer or even mushoku tensei

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

No. Actually it 100% is the responsibility of everyone to help people in need and be a positive force to help them “cope”. Your need to be entertained is far, far less important than easing someone’s pain.

It’s called compassion for a reason.

No, it isn't. There is a very, very large gap between showing empathy and compassion and coddling. Adults have a responsibility for their own lives, feelings, actions and inactions. Good people show empathy and help someone who is struggling, but it is also incumbent on the person struggling to make an effort to help themselves. It is not society's job to but safety bumpers around every imaginable sharp corner that any random member of our 8 billion person society might possibly conceive of thinking is harmful to them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's a far cry from things like grave of the fireflies plastic memories goblinslayer or even mushoku tensei

Not really on topic but Grave of the Fireflies has got to be one of the saddest and most moving animes I have seen. Been many years since I last saw it though

 

[Hussar]

No, it isn't. There is a very, very large gap between showing empathy and compassion and coddling. Adults have a responsibility for their own lives, feelings, actions and inactions. Good people show empathy and help someone who is struggling, but it is also incumbent on the person struggling to make an effort to help themselves. It is not society's job to but safety bumpers around every imaginable sharp corner that any random member of our 8 billion person society might possibly conceive of thinking is harmful to them.

There is also a very large gap between including depictions of slavery in a product for entertainment and putting bumpers on every imaginable sharp corner.

But hey, slippery slope for the win right?

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

There is also a very large gap between including depictions of slavery in a product for entertainment and putting bumpers on every imaginable sharp corner.

But hey, slippery slope for the win right?

In this case, I think you might be on the wrong end of both the large gap and the slippery slope.

 

[Hussar]

In this case, I think you might be on the wrong end of both the large gap and the slippery slope.

So what is the upside for WotC to produce DS?

And how should I handle an AL table where I’m going to be repeatedly playing either slaves or slave owners, many of which are not the villains in the game but are actively allies to the party - that shop keeper after all routinely beats his slaves but, oh right, we can’t show that. This is kinder, gentler slavery of course.

But me, generic white dude, dming at a public table with strangers is expected to take on these roles, repeatedly, all the while sitting across the table from people who very well might have some very real issues with what I’m portraying.

Yeah that’s a fantastic look for the hobby. But we must persevere because heaven forbid we show the slightest empathy. We must teach people to be strong in their silence because it’s not for us to show any sympathy whatsoever.

Yeah. No thanks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

GOOD.

It’s funny. WotC gets roasted all the time for not being creative. Not taking risks. Not doing anything new.

But apparently they’re supposed to do new things by retreading the same old fantasy yet again that has been done a thousand times over the past century of genre fiction.

And if they weren't doing it because they thought it was tired and boring and actually were planning on releasing a new setting, that would be a more effective argument.

 

[Vaalingrade]

No, it isn't. There is a very, very large gap between showing empathy and compassion and coddling.

And calling this coddling is the opposite of those other two things. It's the ultimate in entitlement technology to hurl these kinds of insults at people just because one wants a mainstream release prominently featuring slavery.