What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Hussar]

I would be very interested to see what the responses would be in, in a society that was 80% white, you expressed the belief that minorities were "virtually non-existent" .

OK OK. I exagerated for effect. Can we move on and ACTUALLY ADDRESS the point and not make sure that we're being exactly correct in our math? Considering how minorities that come in around that number have been historically treated as pretty much invisible for a very, very long time, I doubt they would have a huge problem with the description. Hell, I AM a minority that is around that number (actually quite a bit less) and YUPPERS, I barely exist as far as this society goes.

 

[Thourne]

OTOH, not that long ago, there was a fairly large kerfuffle at a con in England (and I'm blanking on the exact details) where the DM did EXACTLY this at the convention, the characters woke up with "sore butts" and the result was a fairly well known DM was ejected from the con.

Man thrown out of UK Games Expo after role-play gang rape row

One woman participating in the game branded the incident "appalling" and said the games master enjoyed the "shock factor of it"

www.mirror.co.uk

THIS is what I'm talking about when I talk about including something like slavery and Dark Sun. Because, it's never JUST a setting book. It's also public play. And tens of thousands of gamers routinely play with strangers.

That is just wow.
I suppose some folks grow older without actually growing up.
At least everyone else seemed to act like adults and tended to the situation properly.

 

[Hussar]

That is just wow.
I suppose some folks grow older without actually growing up.
At least everyone else seemed to act like adults and tended to the situation properly.

And this is the point I've been making all the way along about "problematic content". I'm a big white dude. I REALLY don't want to sit down to DM a bunch of strangers in Dark Sun where the players start off as slaves a la Spartacus. That's just not going to be comfortable.

This is nuance that seems to get lost in the scrum. An RPG product isn't just going to be used at a table where everyone knows each other and have all at least kinda sorta come to some sort of agreement on how to deal with stuff like this. I game with strangers a lot. I know that after the end of my current campaign, I'm losing two of my five regular players to real life stuff, which means I'll be shopping for new players again in the near future.

The LAST thing I want to do is have to deal with something like slavery in a public game.

Which is why smaller, 3pp can often get away with dealing with these issues a bit better. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a lot of 3pp material isn't going to have the audience that a WotC setting guide would have. Nor would it come parceled with a year long public play adventure path.

 

[Kaodi]

Then I would ask perhaps what the growth argument here is? If we take it as true that the hobby was 1) fairly homogeneous, and 2) had not experienced growth in a decade, the initial argument of course is that that by making the material less homogeneous then the players will be less homogeneous and there will be growth. But where do all of these arguments go once the player base has achieved "peak representation" ? What does the growth rate of the hobby have to do with anything when we reach the point where you cannot fix stagnation by bringing in dorky people from all races and genders instead of just one? Once that point is reached do you think the hobby will be grown better by clamping down even harder on the features of the settings?

 

[Faolyn]

That's like asking why the force is so fundamental to Star Wars. It's fundamental to Dark Sun because that's how it was made. If they remove it now, they are gutting a significant part of what makes the setting Dark Sun in the same way that removing the force from Star Wars guts a significant part of what that setting Star Wars.

There can be many important things to a setting.

That makes absolutely no sense and fails as an argument. The Force is fundamental because the entire story would literally not work if it were removed. One of the most important parts to the original trilogy is "Luke learns the ways of The Force and becomes a Jedi Knight." The Force and the Jedi who use it, as a mix of both magic and martial arts, are what separates Star Wars from basically every other sci fi/sci fantasy story ever made. Nothing else in Star Wars is truly unique to it--except for the light sabers, perhaps, but I'm pretty sure that there are other space operas or planetary romances with swords. Lots of sci fi settings have aliens, spaceships, FTL drives, hives of scum and villainy, intelligent robots, totalitarian empires, good vs. evil morality, etc. Even psychic powers aren't really unique in SF, but the Force-using space samurai are.

If slavery were removed from Dark Sun, there are still many, many things that set it apart, and slavery isn't unique to Dark Sun like The Force is unique to Star Wars.

 

[Thourne]

And this is the point I've been making all the way along about "problematic content". I'm a big white dude. I REALLY don't want to sit down to DM a bunch of strangers in Dark Sun where the players start off as slaves a la Spartacus. That's just not going to be comfortable.

This is nuance that seems to get lost in the scrum. An RPG product isn't just going to be used at a table where everyone knows each other and have all at least kinda sorta come to some sort of agreement on how to deal with stuff like this. I game with strangers a lot. I know that after the end of my current campaign, I'm losing two of my five regular players to real life stuff, which means I'll be shopping for new players again in the near future.

The LAST thing I want to do is have to deal with something like slavery in a public game.

Which is why smaller, 3pp can often get away with dealing with these issues a bit better. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a lot of 3pp material isn't going to have the audience that a WotC setting guide would have. Nor would it come parceled with a year long public play adventure path.

Wouldn't the simple thing be simply not to play settings with what you find publicly problematic in public?

I mean that guy who got the boot was way off and rightfully shown the door. I doubt there was a section in the game he was running for how to sexually assault player characters. I assume he inserted the problematic content into the game without any published guidance. (I really hope so at least). I guess what I am saying is, bad actors will be bad actors. So, just don't be one of them. Be inclusive and open to setting fair boundaries based on honest open conversation with your players at your table and have fun.

 

[Faolyn]

Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago, I was young. Now I can certainly tell you that at the tender ages of 13 and 14, we handled sensitive subjects with the utmost respect and maturity it deserved. It'd be a lie, but I could tell you that. The truth is that our sense of humor was often sophmoric, which, if you think about, was pretty good considering we were freshman. One of our favorite jokes revolved around "sore butts" whenever a PC woke up after being rendered unconscious, especially if he had been captured. Hard to believe it, but we'd giggle at that. But as the years passed, we stopped making that joke. We had moved on to different subjects to treat with all the maturity you can expect from a 15 or 16 year old.

I'm not really bothered by the idea that younger people won't treat sensitive subjects with the respect they deserve. In fact, I expect it, because learning how to behave is part of growing up. That young people are unlikely to treat a sensitive subject isn't a good enough reason to exclude something from a game designed to be played by many ages.

Unless you've only just reached the ripe old age of 18-20, what was funny back then was a mix of both adolescent humor and the baked-in bigotry of the time. I assume you're not at all homophobic or find rape funny, but "sore butts" is a homophobic joke that makes light of rape. You almost certainly didn't mean anything cruel by it when you were a kid. You probably didn't even fully realize what you were joking about (or at least not the ramifications of it). It's just that society made "hur dur, you got butt-raped by a guy" into something that people could laugh at. After all, it's entirely likely you grew up in a time when both gay people and rape victims had to keep quiet about it or face societal shame. They weren't given a chance to say, "hey, that's pretty mean, actually."

But society is moving away from that kind of humor. People who are gay or who were raped don't have to stay quiet about it. They can point out that those jokes aren't funny and are actually cruel. People who had previously thought those types of jokes were funny got to learn that. Not everyone cared, of course--there are plenty of people who don't care about what happens to others as long as they themselves are having a good time--but those who do care can learn to not make those kinds of jokes. Even teenagers can learn to not make cruel jokes because even teenagers have empathy.

D&D books (and books from other companies) in Ye Olden Days sometimes had material that would be considered tasteless or mean today (e.g., Orcs of Thar, for an extreme example, or the Vistani) because society had made those things acceptable to write about.

Maybe no young person today will treat slavery with the sensitivity it deserves, simply because they have adolescent brains and don't know any better. But the writers today should and do know better.

 

[Faolyn]

I would be very interested to see what the responses would be in, in a society that was 80% white, you expressed the belief that minorities were "virtually non-existent" .

For a long time, for any table that had one or more non-white people or women of any type, there would be many, many tables that were only white guys.

(Once, I went to my college gaming club and there was a new guy there, talking with one of the older members. New guy looked at me and said "Oh my god! It's a girl!" I looked down the front of my shirt then turned to the older member and said "Dammit, why didn't you tell me!")

 

[Thourne]

For a long time, for any table that had one or more non-white people or women of any type, there would be many, many tables that were only white guys.

(Once, I went to my college gaming club and there was a new guy there, talking with one of the older members. New guy looked at me and said "Oh my god! It's a girl!" I looked down the front of my shirt then turned to the older member and said "Dammit, why didn't you tell me!")

I think you and my wife have a very similar sense of humor.

 

[Faolyn]

And this is the point I've been making all the way along about "problematic content". I'm a big white dude. I REALLY don't want to sit down to DM a bunch of strangers in Dark Sun where the players start off as slaves a la Spartacus. That's just not going to be comfortable.

That'd be something I'd even be hesitant to bring up with my friends, and we've known each other for years and they know I'm not the type of person who would be abusive in that situation (and I know they're not that type either).

For a complete stranger who's GMing, when for all I know they're running a slave game because they get off on it or enjoy having power over certain types of people? "Not going to be comfortable" is exactly right.