What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[CapnZapp]

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.

Remember, what I was replying to was:

I am not saying we need to wallow in the horrors of slavery, colonialism, terrorism, fascism, etc... But I do think that we do not want to erase those things from our game worlds, because they give us the opportunity to create heroes that feel more real -- because in the popular imagination at least, it is rising above injustice (in all its forms) that makes heroes.

Do you scrub your world of slavery and other historical crimes? If so, how do you encourage heroism? If not, what do you do to mitigate the real potential discomfort such subjects can cause? Do you make different decisions based on the specific game or setting? Do you run historical games, and if so do you "soften" history to make it palatable?

In this context, I think "we should be allowed" is a fairly reasonable phrasing. (I am not talking about what MAGA heads scream about when they claim they're getting canceled.) Basically, I expressed agreement with the thread starter. At least, that was my intention.

You, however, changed the subject. You said "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"

To which my reply is: no, I obviously don't. Art isn't only allowed to be published if it is "valuable" to some external evaluation agency. Every single time that path was taken it ended very badly indeed, as even a cursory glance in any history book will tell you...

A much better approach would be to say: if you Umbran feel a particular piece of artistic expression, such as a novel, or a movie, or a roleplaying adventure, is nasty, horrific, denigratory or just plain uninteresting, then don't buy it or play it. Simple as that.

Please tell me you don't mean it when you effectively tell me a publisher must meet a certain threshold for some "value" or they shouldn't publish works containing any bad stuff.



Best Regards,
Zapp

 

[CapnZapp]

All right, I'll bite: how does featuring misogyny and racism in made-up worlds "distance ourselves" from real history and real suffering and the real people who were - and in many cases still are - affected by it? Your argument is that because the worlds are made up, nothing in them matters or should matter?

As you say, fantasy is made up. That means we have complete freedom to decide what is or isn't in our fantasy worlds.

Not sure what you're asking me, Mythago.

I'm just saying that the entire point of fantasy is to be able to explore difficult topics without necessarily bringing real suffering to the foreground. (Of course fantasy works have many values and flaws, I'm talking about the fundamental definition here)

Can we agree we should be able to explore difficult chapters of real history in our ttrpgs without always committing ourselves to making those wrongs the focal point? (At least that's my summary of the original post.)

I think it's great that a show like 1923 (Paramount Plus) really makes for uncomfortable viewing when it comes to the treatment of Native Americans just a mere hundred years ago. (THis show isn't in the fantasy genre, btw) But not all Westerns need to focus on that. Not even all Westerns made today. Yes, given all the Westerns that have been made in total these subjects absolutely deserve being included in every contemporary Western to make up the deficit, but that doesn't mean I automatically give a low grade to a Western that is "merely" entertaining. And I definitely don't automatically think its director is racist or misogynist should their movie feature unpunished crimes against women or minorities. It could simply be that such elements are included to give historic authenticity to the proceedings. Or they have other artistic value. Alternatively they have no reedeeming value whatsoever and the entire film crew is nazist. I am able to separate the work from the artist either way, or at least I want to think I am.

Cheers,
Zapp

 

[billd91]

The reverse is actually what's true however.

You aren't putting slavery and bigotry into your fantasy world, since virtually all fantasy is based on our reality, what you are actually doing is taking slavery and bigotry out, and then acting like "none of this matters, it's all make-believe". In groups and out groups are so core to being human removing bigotry is like removing gravity and then pretending it has no effect on your fantasy world.

Being purely social constructs rather than physical laws of the universe, slavery and bigotry aren't on the same level as gravity as far as constructing a fantasy setting understandable to players.

And since fantasy settings are constructed, choosing not to build in slavery or bigotry isn't taking anything out at all. That's part of the beauty of building a fantasy setting - if I want social cleavages to be present in the setting, my players and I can pick and choose the ones we want and not be beholden to the specifics of Earth history. We can envision and build something else to frame the stories we want to work through, not the stories that depend on social structures handed down to us from the past. That's a limitation you're imposing on yourself by thinking you or anyone else have to be beholden to them in your fantasy gaming.
It may well be that we want certain kinds of social conflict and not certain other kinds. We have the power to make the choice to incorporate them or not. And if the choices we make face some pushback in the public when we talk about them, that's the burden we bear for sharing what we're doing. WotC has the same set of choices.

 

[mythago]

Can we agree we should be able to explore difficult chapters of real history in our ttrpgs without always committing ourselves to making those wrongs the focal point? (At least that's my summary of the original post.)

Your summary of the original post is exactly backwards. The original post was arguing that we must not "erase" or "scrub" things like slavery from our game worlds, because if we do so, we lose important stories that we could tell if we kept them in. (And that point is emphasized in the title of this thread.)

As far as Westerns go, tons of ink/pixels have been spilled by better writers than I about what sorts of things in our entertainment we are willing to handwave off as unnecessary, and which things we are willing to defend because "that's how it was back then for real". If you're looking for a purely entertaining Western though, I enjoyed the hell out of The Harder They Fall despite the 'let's mashup a bunch of cool characters' style throughline.

 

[mythago]

The reverse is actually what's true however.

You aren't putting slavery and bigotry into your fantasy world, since virtually all fantasy is based on our reality, what you are actually doing is taking slavery and bigotry out, and then acting like "none of this matters, it's all make-believe". In groups and out groups are so core to being human removing bigotry is like removing gravity and then pretending it has no effect on your fantasy world.

Fantasy is 'based on' our reality. Reality is a big place. Do I really need to point out the irony of complaining about things that are supposedly inextricably "human" in worlds where we happily include thinking people who aren't humans?

Ingroup/outgroup distinctions are not synonyms for slavery and bigotry, nor are slavery and bigotry so universal and inextricable from humanoid behavior that it's like saying your world has no gravity*.

*noted, gonna cross off all those feather fall magic items and levitate spells from my campaign too

 

[Hussar]

The problem with the “just don’t buy/read it” argument is that it becomes a very easy way to silence or ignore any and all criticism.

At its heart it says, “I know that this is offensive to you but I don’t care because it’s not offensive to me.” It’s an easy position for those in a majority position to take because virtually everything produced within that market is geared for the majority.

Why do you think so much of genre fiction from the early and mid twentieth century is incredibly racist and misogynistic? It’s because the majority of readers and writers were white males who took this exact position.

We’ve seen exactly what happens when the majority takes the position of “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it”.

Capitalism has no morals.

 

[Kaodi]

I wonder whether the reaction would be any different in a different setting. Like, slavery in Golarion for instance does not only affect one specific kind of person, so when you say there is slavery in the setting anyone can be struck by the idea that someone like them who is enslaved might be encountered or exist in the setting. I am not as familiar with the situation in Forgotten Realms but I imagine it is somewhat similar.

On the other hand if you had a setting where the white-coded lands got smoked in a cataclysm and the remnants of its people were easy pickings for exploitation and thus the baseline assumption is that slaves are all visually white... would the same people still object?

 

[Hussar]

I wonder whether the reaction would be any different in a different setting. Like, slavery in Golarion for instance does not only affect one specific kind of person, so when you say there is slavery in the setting anyone can be struck by the idea that someone like them who is enslaved might be encountered or exist in the setting. I am not as familiar with the situation in Forgotten Realms but I imagine it is somewhat similar.

On the other hand if you had a setting where the white-coded lands got smoked in a cataclysm and the remnants of its people were easy pickings for exploitation and thus the baseline assumption is that slaves are all visually white... would the same people still object?

Absolutely yes.

Slavery is okay because the victims are white is not a good look.

 

[Bagpuss]

The problem with the “just don’t buy/read it” argument is that it becomes a very easy way to silence or ignore any and all criticism.

At its heart it says, “I know that this is offensive to you but I don’t care because it’s not offensive to me.” It’s an easy position for those in a majority position to take because virtually everything produced within that market is geared for the majority.

Yes because offense is down to the individual. There is a difference between an rpg product that nearly everyone would find offense say one where the players are recruited to capture run away slaves prior to the US Civil War, or one where some people might find offense just because slavery features in it, even though the players are hired to break free the slaves, in a fantasy setting.

You can't be banning something just because a minority of people have an issue with it, for reasons the majority disagree with, unless it actually causes some harm to that minority and they need protecting.

 

[J.Quondam]

You can't be banning something just because a minority of people have an issue with it, for reasons the majority disagree with, unless it actually causes some harm to that minority and they need protecting.

But that's the question, isn't it?
Who decides what harm is? The minority experiencing it, or the majority claiming it's not "really" harm?