What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Scribe]

Yeah, it used to be that when haters acted like they had a right not to have their sensibilities offended, they were told exactly what they could go do with their righteous indignation. Now the complainers' sense of entitlement has been catered to, and so people are concerned about what that's done to the hobby.

90's Vegans. Anyway, we all know this wont go anywhere. Just glad we can establish that 'disney-fication' or whatever one wishes to call it certainly is a thing, and its the way forward for 5e/1D&D, because 'reasons'.

 

[Bagpuss]

Okay, that's an interesting test case. What do they fear will happen if they do go ahead, how reasonable is the fear, and if they did do we think there would have been a reasonable way to do so? We can turn them into a hypothetical designer instead if you don't have that information.

I'm afraid I don't have that information to hand, and I don't want to assign motivations beyond what I can recall.

 

[Faolyn]

Perhaps in reality, but not in a box of crayons they are finite.

Or are you saying we can get rid of slavery in our story telling but the we, but just have a different tone of slavery, say indentured servitude, or judicial system that imprisons people and then forces them to do labour (might even disproportionately target a particular race).

At which point why not just use the Red Crayon instead of the Cranberry Crunch Red Crayon?

So, you're saying that you can't imagine telling stories that don't involve the red crayon? Harold wouldn't be happy.

There may not be an infinite number of stories that can be told--but there's a lot, probably more than any one GM can expect to run in a lifetime, and a lot of those stories can be told without slavery. And even more can be told with slavery that doesn't reduce it to a goal the PCs need to achieve in order to get some XP--which is what the majority of RPGs reduce slavery to.

Are you planning to run a game where the BBEG is the government, and instead of killing people the PCs take on the role of politicians who are attempting to reform the entire judicial system and also take on systemic racism, entirely through legal means (for a modern-day politician meaning on the word legal, of course)?

If so, awesome. Seriously, that could make for an interesting and rewarding game. But... I doubt that's what you actually mean, and I doubt that most people would want to play in that game.

Instead, what you probably mean is, there's a modern-day game, and there's an NPC who has been forced into prison labor, and you want to break that person out for whatever reason--maybe he's an ally of the PCs, maybe he's a bad guy who has info you need--and maybe you'll also break the other inmates out as well, and the only long-term effect that's going to happen depends on how well you rolled, because that will determine if the police are able to track you down. Or maybe the PCs have been arrested (wrongfully, I'm sure, or at least on trumped-up charges) and forced into labor and they have to escape. Best case scenario, the party reveals the prison's abuses to the media and something is done about them so the prisoners aren't being forced into labor anymore, turning the game into a complete fantasy.

(And this is as much as I will talk about the prison system here, since I'm sure it's getting too far into politics now.)

But hey, it's your table. You do you. But we're not talking about individual tables; we're talking about gaming companies, who literally hire people to write with the crayons and who can easily figure out a way to use red crayons mean something other than slavery.

 

[mythago]

Yeah, it used to be that when haters acted like they had a right not to have their sensibilities offended, they were told exactly what they could go do with their righteous indignation. Now the complainers' sense of entitlement has been catered to, and so people are concerned about what that's done to the hobby.

Some sensibiliities are more equal than others!

 

[Alzrius]

Some sensibiliities are more equal than others!

Or simply more delicate.

 

[Thourne]

I would love to have those things put into WotC's products. It would give me hope that they care about worldbuilding. Consider me officially arguing for it.

If you go back a good stretch (I am going from memory here), I believe "A Mighty Fortress" (2nd ed AD&D, I think, and based on Western Europe) had all the languages and the barriers to communication were down right hilarious and troubling. The first sessions initial meet in an Inn segment, ended up lasting three full sessions with multiple arguments and two fights breaking out. This all because in several cases only 1 person could translate for one to two other persons and this was repeated over a 10 player/character group. It was all kinds of mistranslation and misunderstanding. We still laugh about it now, all these decades later...and also will still never do that again, lol

 

[Faolyn]

It seems to me that we're talking about slavery as an issue because of the recent Dark Sun kerfuffle.

It wasn't really a kerfluffle, even. WotC said they weren't going to put out Dark Sun, and they cited slavery as the reason. Personally, I think that the real reason is that people keep poo-poohing their attempts to create a psionic system (three UAs, none of which succeeded) but also don't want psionics to be limited to archetypes and feats. Meaning that WotC knew that whatever they put out would annoy people, so when combined with the slavery--which has had people even on these forums saying is apparently more important than the psionics, defiling magic, scarcity of water and metal, the post-apocalyptic feel, the replacement of gods with elements--publishing Dark Sun would be a failure.

(This, of course, is just speculation, except for the first sentence.)

But, zero Mythic Africa. Again, if we've had all this freedom for all this time, to produce any product we could think of, then certainly there should have been a couple that spoke to a Mythic Africa. After all, everything is supposed to be equal right? Free speech and all that.

To be entirely fair, there were a couple of Dragon Magazine articles for 2e.

Which actually just shows that TSR knew that Mythic Africa was a definite possibility that at least some people were interested in, but they never expanded upon it. Not even with a green leatherette book. Because we needed both Charlemagne and the Crusades, but not Africa.

 

[gamerprinter]

If I may ask, @gamerprinter, what were the specific concerns about the module? Or, were there specific concerns, or, more just general, "Well this kinda sucks" sort of thing? On a personal level, I wouldn't have any problem with this to be honest. And, as a few additional questions, do you think these concerns hurt future sales? Did you feel you were being attacked for doing this?

Nothing specific I don't think, just the general 'this situation sucks' - Kaidan is Japanese horror with an emphasis on Japanese cultural authenticity (I'm half Japanese and a lifetime Japanophile, I thought OA sucked in the greater scheme of things). So fixing OA was a part of original concept (back in 80's when I first purchased OA), but no, it's nothing like OA, it does have a hint of Ravenloft, though.

Edit, oh and now, Kaidan was very successful and spoken well of by the reviewers. F. Wesley Schneider, EiC, at Paizo, at the time, wrote the Forward in the Gamemaster's Guide to Kaidan and it was a glowing overview of what Kaidan was to him. Still RPGnet banned me because of it.

 

[mythago]

90's Vegans. Anyway, we all know this wont go anywhere. Just glad we can establish that 'disney-fication' or whatever one wishes to call it certainly is a thing, and its the way forward for 5e/1D&D, because 'reasons'.

"reasons" = sales. That used to be thought to be an appropriate yardstick for game content - if a company published Journey to the Lair of the Big-Breasted Witch Queens with cover art to match, there was clearly a market for that supplement, it was entirely appropriate for the company to target to the "sex sells" market, and if you didn't like it, STFU and go write your own thing. Now that the market has shifted, all of a sudden
we're-just-selling-what-the-audience demands is "pandering" and bad for the hobby, and being told to STFU and go write your own thing is silencing.

Or more delicate.

Here we are firmly in agreement, though I suspect not about which sensibilities are actually the delicate ones.

 

[Faolyn]

Maybe because they didn't sanitize it as much as you think they did. He fails to prevent the Cataclysm because he goes to murder Isolde, who does curse him with her dying breath. As to the question of his prior wife's death, I don't think a revision is entirely unwelcome. After all, if he had murdered his first wife and child, the gods would have really been making a reach offering him redemption. I think the story works more easily if his initial transgression isn't quite so extreme.

I hadn't heard about the changes to Soth, but what you say makes sense. Having murdered his wife and child (and IIRC, the child was murdered for being ugly and/or disabled) and the gods being all, "OK, here's a chance for redemption," it turns the wife and child into mere plot devices.