What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[the Jester]

The only way the number might increase would be if you provided a setting where the PCs were encouraged to slavers, and perhaps given some dubious moral justification, but I'm not aware of any such settings in D&D's history (though perhaps I am forgetting one).

I can see it as one possible focus for an evil campaign, but that's about it for a setting that encouraged slaver pcs. And that's less a setting and more a setup.

 

[the Jester]

When you remove specific colors of crayons from the box, you are also making room for other colors of crayons that your box previously had no room for.

Are you saying that having slavery in your campaign excludes other stuff from it? I'm not sure I am following you here.

 

[cranberry]

First they came for the RPG books
Then they came for the history books
Next they came for the history teachers
Then they came for the history wrong-thinkers
Then they made lists of their enemies and went after them
Finally, they came for me because there was no one left to persecute.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Be careful what you wish for.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I'm not missing your point.

I think it's a completely hollow point (NPI) and also completely dishonest because the PCs in D&D are frequently bursting into the homes of beings to slaughter them. "Bad factions" aren't slaughtered by "good guys" in media, note - that's not a thing. Fascists do that. Creepy spec-ops guys who are completely morally ambiguous do that. Zero Dark Thirty isn't about "good guys" getting "the bad guy". It's about an imperial power tracking down its enemy and murdering him, outside of laws and justice.

I have no f***ing clue what you are talking about, because what you are referring to doesn't happen as much in games anymore. At least, not my games and I don't think as much in adventures. Old school adventures where you just go in and slaughter people of ambiguous morals seems to be on the downswing in general. I feel like this argument works for 20-30 years ago, but less so in today's gaming environment. That doesn't mean we don't justify way too much violence, but I don't see it as a justification for your nihilistic view.

Self-defense murder is still a naughty word thing. It's not a heroic thing in most cases, not unless it's of someone actively trying to commit murder. When D&D characters arrive to ambush and slaughter humanoids who maybe have done bad stuff, they're not engaging in "self-defense" or anything resembling it, morally, especially as they then rob the place.

Yes, but that happens in media with the good guys. Just look at the Rangers of Gondor ambushing the Easterlings in the LotR movies. People didn't blink an eye at that. But if they weren't at war or something, people would probably not view that the same. We condition ourselves to certain justifications, and within D&D that is still the same.

You really want to dig into this? This is deep, dark, horrifying mine that society is okay with, but that if we really analyze, is deeply messed-up.

There's plenty of horrifying things that society is okay with, yes, and that goes beyond violence. But so much of that is actually justified very specifically, and when those justifications start falling apart, it starts to change. I've seen people be less okay with doing the traditional murder-hobo stuff than they used to be, and I see that as part of the general gaming environment today. I don't see your view having that sort of nuance.

That doesn't make me wrong at. That merely nuances my point. I should also add that, forty years ago, murdering non-human children was broadly acceptable with a lot of D&D players, too. Gary Gygax himself, in like, 2008, specifically said it was justified and okay, using ultra-racist's psychotic creed - "Nits make lice".

Again do you really want to keep digging at this? The fact is society glamourizes as wide swathe of forms of violence. Not all violence but an awful lot of it. And murderous, horrific violence too.

Yes, but that's my point: It's not all violence, but specific ones. We can ethically have problems with what society glorifies, but also worth noting that the window here has been shifting over the years. The same stuff that worked 30 years ago does not today. I've seen plenty of people rip into Gygax's ideas in recent years, and it's become harder and harder to defend.

So you brought up an irrelevant point? Okay. Certainly that isn't why WotC or Paizo are doing this.

I mean, that's what Erik Mona said. Disagree with him if you want, but I don't think you know as much on this as you think you do.

Now you're just changing the subject. Many indigenous groups have been subject to slavery, and more to far greater horrors - often involving the exact of "kill them, they're worthless, take their stuff" violence that D&D has, for decades, glamourized. Again you brought this up, so you should be the one asking, frankly. I don't think I'm being hugely cavalier. Certainly I think your absolute dismissal of D&D and RPGs in general absolute adoration of violence and theft is "cavalier".

I'm not, because they are often inextricably linked. And yes, D&D has glamorized that for decades... and is doing so less and less as people talk about it. You're taking my words in the most uncharitable manner, which is making discussion rather difficult.

Ok, but you haven't really presented that as an actual argument. I'm not saying you have to, just commenting.

I have! You just literally assumed because I didn't go as far as you that I didn't agree at some level. But I do: we absolutely have a problem with how we glorify violence in our media. But how we do it and which moments of violence we do matters, in my opinion. It's why certain kinds of violence are looked at as being more acceptable than others.

 

[Justice and Rule]

First they came for the RPG books
Then they came for the history books
Next they came for the history teachers
Then they came for the history wrong-thinkers
Then they made lists of their enemies and went after them
Finally, they came for me because there was no one left to persecute.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Be careful what you wish for.

As someone who teaches history, the view that removing slavery from RPGs is somehow going to lead them to take me away is hilarious.

The people asking for this change are not the people I generally view as a threat to my profession, and the people who don't want me to teach about slavery are generally not on the same side as those who don't want it used as much in RPGs.

 

[Faolyn]

???????

That has nothing to do with golems replacing slaves or the like. Indeed, if sentient, playable golems replaced slaves, we'd be back in the exact same problematic place. So that's not a real response.

Again, tell that to the people who think you have to have slaves in order to make a rich, realistic world. (Or other controversial topics, like sexism, homophobia, rape, etc.)

(And I didn't say sentient or playable golems either, and it's up in the air if a sentient construct would care about what happens to a non-sentient construct, which could be seen like a sophisticated, fully intelligent android caring about a toaster.)

I'd agree that slavery isn't needed for Dark Sun, but I would suggestion some form of large-scale societal oppression is, serfdom probably, or something like it.

I'd agree with that. Or perhaps something where the peasants risk so many dangers should they try to leave--Athas is a violent place, after all--that the only place they can be safe would be under the thumb of the sorcerer king. Better the devil elemental they know.

No.

The topic of this thread is "controversial content" in general. We are talking about all these things. And a rational argument should hold up more broadly, at least when it's such a broadly stated argument.

The "other things" I was referring to is general RPG-style muderhobory, which is (for good or for ill) not considered controversial content. Because everyone "whatabouts" slavery by saying "oh yeah, well what about violence, huh?"

This seems like a fatuous concern to me. Just don't include numbers or details on how slave markets/slave economies work if that's the issue. I mean, WotC puts out incredibly under-detailed 1/4-arsed setting books these days, they won't even explain the main economy let alone sub-economies.

Sure, WotC isn't likely to put out a a description more than a couple of sentences long, at most, but you can't tell me that people aren't going to think "there's slave markets, therefore I can buy and sell slaves." It would be nice to assume that everyone who reads that will automatically think "ah, a place the PCs can destroy!" but you can't possibly believe that's the reality.

AFAICT, in most current/past adventures that involve slavers (I won't say all), the slavers aren't going around actually selling them. Most of the time, they bring the slaves back to their own lairs and use the slaves right there and then. If you get slave markets, you get them in obviously evil, not-our-kind-of-people places, like drow cities. But in Dark Sun, and in similar settings, slavery is such a cultural norm that there would be markets.

That's the problem I have with this type of in-game slavery. It's not a shocking evil to be overcome with heroic deeds. It's the type of banal evil that would require the PCs (should they even want to try to change it) to actually change both the government and the hearts and minds of all the citizenship, through months or years of in-game hard work. Maybe they can kill the king and take the throne or give it to a good person, but the populace itself is inured to that evil, or even want it to continue. And while that would be a very interesting game for some, the average person does not want to play Politics and Pollsters.

 

[MGibster]

Again, tell that to the people who think you have to have slaves in order to make a rich, realistic world. (Or other controversial topics, like sexism, homophobia, rape, etc.)

If you've got a setting with no problematic elements you might have a rich world, but it's not a realistic world. But I'm not sure realism is the most important thing when it comes to settings. I'm running a Fallout campaign starting tomorrow, and slavery is part of the setting. Is Fallout setting realistic? Despite the inclusion of slavery, genocide, sexual assault, cannibalism, etc., etc., it is not a very realistic setting at all. But it's a fairly rich setting that a lot of people have fun playing in.

 

[Faolyn]

I think the worse thing we loose when we eliminate controversial content is that it simply hides it. Once the eliminate and cancel all the content they want to get rid of....what will be left? Nearly all media from before 2010 will be gone. Nearly all the classic movies and books would be gone.

You'd even have to get rid of the list of really good media that opposes the content. After all it can be taken in the wrong way. And what if someone was to only watch the first part of the media with the "bad stuff"? The only way is to get rid of it all.

I guess they might keep the stuff in the history books?

And RPGs? Guess they would just have box like characters that moved through random landscapes?

And after a generation? Well, you would have people growing up knowing noting of the "content".

And it's BAD enough RIGHT NOW. Ask the typical person nearly anything about nearly anything and they might know a bit of vague facts. Even big important things and major things.

It will all just be gone....hidden away like it does not exist.


But it does.....

Oh, for Pete's sake. Nothing is being removed, at least not from WotC's content. The material is still available for sale as pdfs. It's just not being updated to 5e.

 

[Faolyn]

There is no limit to the number of crayons in the box.

Then your analogy, that removing "red" from the crayon limits the colors you can use/the stories you can tell, is by your own definition completely false.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Then your analogy, that removing "red" from the crayon limits the colors you can use/the stories you can tell, is by your own definition completely false.

Where the heck are we anymore with the crayon analogy? The whole thing feels like it is trying and failing to be too clever by half.