What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Umbran]

My first thought was that we should absolutely be "allowed" to feature slavery, colonialism, terrorism, fascism, etc in our games, and not just as "this is bad. go destroy bad" adventure quests either.

So, there's a major point here - "we should be allowed." What constitutes "allowing"?

That you can use it at you table at home? Well, nobody knows what you do at your table other than your own players, and those you tell. So, that's not in danger.

That you can publish such material without criticism? Work you put out to the public is never (and should never be) immune from criticism. So, that's a non-starter.

So, the job then is, if you want to publish such stuff, you need to do a really good job of it, so that the value of its inclusion clearly outweighs the issues.

 

[Justice and Rule]

As far a diversity of knowledge goes, when it comes to gaming, I don't think most people care about that. When someone announces a fantasy or science fiction game based on African people, very few people ask what the creators know about Africa, but they're awfully keen to know what everyone's race is. You could have a dude who wrote his PhD on the Songhai Empire, but if he's white then it's going to be a problem for a significant portion of the intended audience if he writes an RPG.

Do you have an actual example of this?

 

[Cadence]

The place of origin of an African-American is America/USA. (Or is that term also used for immigrants?)

Tangentially...

The 2020 census had "origin" meaning "ethnic and national origins" (so, ancestry).


Some older censuses are much more useful for genealogical things. The 1920 one, for example, wanted the Place of Birth and Mother Tongue for each person and for their parents. (Going over the years, it's interesting watching the shift from, say 1850: Germany, 1860-on: France; or 1850:Germany, 1860:Oldenburg; etc...).

 

[Cadence]

There's a whole lot packed into this tiny paragraph. No, living somewhere doesn't make you particularly knowledgable of what life was like there some 200-1,000 years ago. Some dude living in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2023 is living a very different life from someone who lived there in 1080. Even here in Arkansas, the attitudes and behavior of people in 2023 are very different from what my fellow Arkansans believed in 1923. Certainly we have some things in common though, living here today doesn't give me a great deal of insight into how people back then felt.

When it comes to studying history, I don't think it makes much difference whether or not you're from that country precisely because they were so different back then. The past is a foreign country, they do things different. I'm pretty comfortable with a woman from the Orkney Islands making a career studying American colonial history just as much as I am an African American man born in Florida. What difference does it make? The past is equally foreign to both of them. (Okay, maybe it's a little less foreign to them because English is their native tongue.)

As far a diversity of knowledge goes, when it comes to gaming, I don't think most people care about that. When someone announces a fantasy or science fiction game based on African people, very few people ask what the creators know about Africa, but they're awfully keen to know what everyone's race is. You could have a dude who wrote his PhD on the Songhai Empire, but if he's white then it's going to be a problem for a significant portion of the intended audience if he writes an RPG.

I had some more in a follow-up at:

What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

Not really about being knowledgeable per se. It is about having enough ownership to get it wrong. Like, the fidelity of Pathfinder to historical Europe is practically nil but it does not matter because we have the cultural ownership to do that and be like, "Whatever."

www.enworld.org

It kind of feels like if I were producing an RPG product covering some part of the world that I'd like to have more than one person, so that all of the aspects were hit, hopefully by multiple people.

 

[MGibster]

Do you have an actual example of this?

Specifically, no. I do remember an announcement about a fantasy game based on Africa from a few years back and a poster specifically saying he wouldn't buy it because no POC was involved in its production. He didn't voice any concerns about what qualifications the creators might have to write such an RPG, only what race they were. There was a failed Kickstarter for an Afrofuturist science fiction game, and in all the discussions about, I don't remember anyoine giving a fig about the creator's qualifications to write anything about African people. Because it's not about diversity of knowledge.

 

[MGibster]

It kind of feels like if I were producing an RPG product covering some part of the world that I'd like to have more than one person, so that all of the aspects were hit, hopefully by multiple people.

When I worked at a museum, I very quickly figured out I had to make difficult choices between best practice in how to preserve and display artifiacts versus the reality of my budget which placed severe limitations on what I could do. If I were making an RPG, sure, I'd love to get many hands involved, but the truth is how many hands could I afford?

 

[Micah Sweet]

When I worked at a museum, I very quickly figured out I had to make difficult choices between best practice in how to preserve and display artifiacts versus the reality of my budget which placed severe limitations on what I could do. If I were making an RPG, sure, I'd love to get many hands involved, but the truth is how many hands could I afford?

Which is why this attitude will ultimately lead to less content, which is a loss for the consumer. Making a strong effort and doing your best to be respectful within your means should be enough.

 

[Kaodi]

When I worked at a museum, I very quickly figured out I had to make difficult choices between best practice in how to preserve and display artifiacts versus the reality of my budget which placed severe limitations on what I could do. If I were making an RPG, sure, I'd love to get many hands involved, but the truth is how many hands could I afford?

For what it is worth based on the blurb of who worked on writing the Tian Xia World Guide there were 84 hands, give or take.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Specifically, no. I do remember an announcement about a fantasy game based on Africa from a few years back and a poster specifically saying he wouldn't buy it because no POC was involved in its production. He didn't voice any concerns about what qualifications the creators might have to write such an RPG, only what race they were.

I mean, did the creator express what qualifications they had? When you're writing about something that you might not share a cultural touchstone with, maybe you have to put people more at ease than normal?

There was a failed Kickstarter for an Afrofuturist science fiction game, and in all the discussions about, I don't remember anyoine giving a fig about the creator's qualifications to write anything about African people. Because it's not about diversity of knowledge.

If it failed, maybe they did and it just didn't get expressed in the discussions you read. It's not like others haven't succeeded in that area.

 

[Cadence]

When I worked at a museum, I very quickly figured out I had to make difficult choices between best practice in how to preserve and display artifiacts versus the reality of my budget which placed severe limitations on what I could do. If I were making an RPG, sure, I'd love to get many hands involved, but the truth is how many hands could I afford?

I think an earlier version of my typing it had "if I were a large game company" and it got dropped. If it was an individual small kickstarter that has no money for interior art... then it sure would be tough. How odd would it look to have extra consultants as stretch goals? (That seems to imply the product isn't close to done which feels bad). If one isn't expecting to make any money themselves, how bad does it look to try to offer people a share of the profits? (It feels like that wouldn't fly with artists, so I'm not sure it would fly with anyone else).

Were there some displays the museum powers that be just decided they couldn't do it well enough to pursue?