What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Doctor Futurity]

I remember them taking out the assassin and removing elements like that. I don't remember them prohibiting evil aligned PCs though

No they didn't prohibit evil as an alignment, they simply provided a lot of context advising against it. It's probably not seen as big a deal today, but in 1989 it was a huge shift to go from 1E which was "anything goes, and the assassin must be evil" to 2E which was "assassin is a thing you can do but not a class, and you can be evil, but its not a good idea and we will de-emphasize the entire focus of the game on campaigns that could allow for evil conduct."

EDIT: I think at some point TSR got more relaxed about this. A good way to contrast how they handled this can be found by looking at the 2E Drow of the Underdark and comparing it to the 3rd edition Drow of the Underdark books.

 

[Faolyn]

More blatant misrepresentations. It never fails to get here when someone disagrees with you about something that you feel strongly about. Nowhere did I say or imply that I was making an equivalence. You need to take a step back, breathe, and then read what I say. You don't win the internet or even win points by misrepresenting what is being said.

Do not patronize me.

You are making really bad analogies and getting upset when your analogies are pointed out as being bad.

You have repeatedly said that slavery is necessary for Dark Sun. You also said that salt is necessary for human life. If you weren't making an equivalence, then you're being an incredibly bad writer here.

And I said why, which was the answer.

No, that's not an answer. You liking something and that something being necessary for a setting are two incredibly different things--unless you are claiming that your likes and dislikes are the only thing that matters when it comes to a setting.

Because it's far more difficult to add in. If they remove it, they will have to completely alter how Dark Sun society works. That means that I would have to rework the entire setting to add it back in, unlike the Wall of the Faithless.

No, you wouldn't have to completely alter how Dark Sun society works. No slaves, then you add serfs or workers or even short-term indentured servants. Make the gladiators there for similar reasons. QED.

Okay. And? Since you acknowledge that it has nothing to do with real life, what's the problem?

I already said: It's insulting to a real life group that is often, in real life, told that we deserve to be tortured in hell. Do you honestly not understand that?

Bad things happen in D&D. That's why the PCs can be heroes. That's a lot of work. A lot more than removal would be for you.

Really? Because your next paragraph states that removing it would make Dark Sun totally different, which would in fact be "a lot of work." So it's OK for me to do the work to remove it but not for you to do the lot of work to add it back in, even though that work was already done for you in 2e and 4e?

I only need to name one. Slavery. Remove slavery itself and it would make Dark Sun totally different and that can't be replicated serfs, and absolutely pain workers wouldn't even come close. At least serfs are in the same neighborhood.

So your answer to why slavery is needed is because slavery is needed, and the only reason it's needed is because you can't imagine using something other than slaves. Bravo. Well done.

 

[Bedrockgames]

AD&D 2nd Edition banned the Assassin class and Half-Orcs, and said evil wasn’t for player characters.

I didn’t like 2e, and that was one of the reasons.

Again, I recall them making changes in tone and removing classes like the assassin (I think they also took out the half orc as well). I think those changes were not great. I enjoyed 2E for its settings, and I think the system worked well. But it did suffer in terms of the tone (to me it felt like an extension of the blandness that had crept into so much 80s entertainment). Which is one of the reasons a setting like Dark Sun was so refreshing.

I know for example the removal of the assassin almost resulted in Artemis Entreri being taken out of the books too (and I believe RA Salvatore had to make a case that he wasn't an assassin but a duel or multi class character---fighter thief or something). So there definitely were substantial changes.

But again, I don't recall any actual ban on evil player characters. It is possible I missed this and just have overlooked it all these years. I wouldn't say cautioning against evil pcs is the same as prohibiting them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No they didn't prohibit evil as an alignment, they simply provided a lot of context advising against it. It's probably not seen as big a deal today, but in 1989 it was a huge shift to go from 1E which was "anything goes, and the assassin must be evil" to 2E which was "assassin is a thing you can do but not a class, and you can be evil, but its not a good idea and we will de-emphasize the entire focus of the game on campaigns that could allow for evil conduct."

That I don't dispute at all. I do recall those changes for sure. Personally I did like 2E for the reasons I stated but I also think they took out a lot of the sharper edges, like the assassin and the half orc, that gave D&D an interesting flavor (I grew up on things like Conan so the more vanilla flavor of fantasy that 2E prioritized I think was a little less exciting)

 

[Doctor Futurity]

They very strongly tried to discourage people from playing evil PCs and be the heroes. The lack of half-orc and assassin, coupled with their myriad of reasons why evil might not be a good idea clearly showed that.

I saw it sometimes. It was uncommon, but then it was just as uncommon in 1e in my experience. Everyone know that switched to 2e did so because it clarified some rules and in my opinion was a better edition than 1e, but we didn't alter how we played our characters.

I saw you entered into the discussion and responded because I wasn't sure if you saw my other post on the matter.

Pretty much....in my own groups back then we all tended to play as we always had, but that often was more good/heroic anyway. In a twist of irony, I recall a game in 1992ish when my group had a guest player. He ran a chaotic evil thief and really aggravated the group, so they tricked him and sold him into slavery and had him Shanghai'd off to some distant kingdom (oh, yeah, welcome to the 90's!). I probably would have handled that differently as a DM today, lol....I'm not very tolerant of inter-party conflicts that are clearly derailing the group anymore.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

That I don't dispute at all. I do recall those changes for sure. Personally I did like 2E for the reasons I stated but I also think they took out a lot of the sharper edges, like the assassin and the half orc, that gave D&D an interesting flavor (I grew up on things like Conan so the more vanilla flavor of fantasy that 2E prioritized I think was a little less exciting)

I seem to recall that a lot of that stuff was soft-added back in through the PHB Handbooks, the brown-cover volumes. Like assassin became a kit or something. I know when someone wanted to play an assassin, I just told them to break out the 1E PHB and do it, we never really sweated the small stuff on compatibility issues.

 

[Bedrockgames]

EDIT: I think at some point TSR got more relaxed about this. A good way to contrast how they handled this can be found by looking at the 2E Drow of the Underdark and comparing it to the 3rd edition Drow of the Underdark books.

Part of it might have been things like the rise in White Wolf (and the overall move away from pablum in the 90s). If you look at something as simple as sitcom TV from that Era, Seinfeld was a direct response to the emphasis on overly wholesome shows littered with very special episodes and learning lessons. Being a bit more transgressive was cool, so I do think some of that crept into the content more and more (just a sense, it isn't like I have gone back and quantified it)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do not patronize me.

You are making really bad analogies and getting upset when your analogies are pointed out as being bad.

You have repeatedly said that slavery is necessary for Dark Sun. You also said that salt is necessary for human life. If you weren't making an equivalence, then you're being an incredibly bad writer here.


No, that's not an answer. You liking something and that something being necessary for a setting are two incredibly different things--unless you are claiming that your likes and dislikes are the only thing that matters when it comes to a setting.


No, you wouldn't have to completely alter how Dark Sun society works. No slaves, then you add serfs or workers or even short-term indentured servants. Make the gladiators there for similar reasons. QED.


I already said: It's insulting to a real life group that is often, in real life, told that we deserve to be tortured in hell. Do you honestly not understand that?


Really? Because your next paragraph states that removing it would make Dark Sun totally different, which would in fact be "a lot of work." So it's OK for me to do the work to remove it but not for you to do the lot of work to add it back in, even though that work was already done for you in 2e and 4e?


So your answer to why slavery is needed is because slavery is needed, and the only reason it's needed is because you can't imagine using something other than slaves. Bravo. Well done.

Not in Dark Sun. Plenty of other setting ideas that have similar themes but don't use things you don't like though.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I seem to recall that a lot of that stuff was soft-added back in through the PHB Handbooks, the brown-cover volumes. Like assassin became a kit or something. I know when someone wanted to play an assassin, I just told them to break out the 1E PHB and do it, we never really sweated the small stuff on compatibility issues.

There were a lot of options put out in the brown books. Also a lot of people I knew just used the 1E monk and assassin in their 2E games (at our table it was pretty common to have 1E hardcovers next to the 2e ones)

 

[Micah Sweet]

That I don't dispute at all. I do recall those changes for sure. Personally I did like 2E for the reasons I stated but I also think they took out a lot of the sharper edges, like the assassin and the half orc, that gave D&D an interesting flavor (I grew up on things like Conan so the more vanilla flavor of fantasy that 2E prioritized I think was a little less exciting)

Personally, I used material from 1e and 2e interchangeably and simultaneously.