What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Synthil]

And indentured servitude isn't like that? My own grandfather was an indentured child laborer. I don't think anyone is arguing for race based chattel slavery targeting only black people. Which would indeed be grossly specific and reproduce real world bigotry that perpetuates real world harm.

That being said, if this is indeed as uncomfortable a topic as it seems to be (at least for Americans), I guess it only makes sense to minimize or delete in official settings. In the end, the (emotional) well being of the players trumps any inclusion of tropes in a fictional setting.

I'm more flabbergasted than anything. I like having unambiguous bad guys. But anything that makes them such is now off the table in official products? I guess destroying the world would be far removed from the real world to still be used. At least in a post cold war era.

 

[Maxperson]

I always thought the idea of an atheist in Forgotten Realms was silly. The equivalent of being a flat Earther today.

The Wall of the Faithless is not about atheism, though. It's lack of respect/honoring of the gods. A few might be atheists. A few might be agnostic. The overwhelming majority just don't venerate the gods that they know exist.

 

[Irlo]

I'm more flabbergasted than anything. I like having unambiguous bad guys. But anything that makes them such is now off the table in official products?

No. What brings you to that conclusion?

 

[Autumnal]

I spend a bunch of time bedbound (orthostatic hypotension - don’t ask for it by name, or at all), and sometimes I go on long mental rambles. I got to think how I might construct a Dark Sun without slavery in it. Two notes:

* I haven’t tried to preserve all the other features unchanged. I went for the vibe: desert environment, swords and sandals, all of that.

* This is one evening’s pondering, not a serious plan of action. I’ve written real gaming book outlines and contributed to ones for game lines, so I’m sure this is not that. It’s more a proof by existence to show that something (I think) with the vibe and without slavery can work.

the premise is here is that there’s never been large-scale slavery on Athas. Powerful individuals do sometimes treat prisoners as slaves, but they have to keep it secret. Keeping slaves is punished with loaf of status and privileges, at best; and worse, it gets you executed.

instead, I’ve looted a real but neglected concept from history: the Roman system of patronage. This was really important in both the republic and the empire. There’s a book about one aspect of this, whose title gets the. Sin point across: Murder Was Not a Crime: Homicide and Power in the Roman Republic.

The basic status for anyone who wants to live in one of the cities is “contributor”. There’s a universal levee for labor. You “donate” two days a week or one week a month, doing whatever you do, and in return you get basic protections from the authorities. You can stay in one of the official barracks, you have the right to buy and register property, you can pay standard fees and work in any lawful occupation, and you get a share of civic water. Everything else, including having offenses against your person and stuff other than theft taken as a crime, requires a patron.

Patronage is a bit like idealized feudalism in miniature. Your patron gives you protection as a extended member of their clan, supports you in job-seeking and in legal disputes, owes you a share of clan food and resources, and so on. Doing patronage badly or dishonestly can cost the patron loss of status and privileges, like being fired from civic positions or losing authority to have privately employed soldiers. As a client, you owe your client a personal labor levee, which can take up to as much time as the civic levee but not more. You owe your patron gifts on top of thst (there’d be a table of expected swag based on patron and client social positions). You support them in social and other conflicts. Your patron can assign you special tasks to be part of your labor for them, and you’d better do them.

You can have a second patron, and many social climbers do. Figuring out how to juggle conflicting orders, though, is on you as the climber. The city intervenes only to prohibit you from taking a third patron.

There are many levels of authority In the cities, down just two or three in villages. For an actual core book, I’d work this out in detail, with diagrams of the pyramid of power in different cities to show ways it can pile up.

Patrons vary, of course. Good ones give their clients useful gifts, mention them in public proclamations of the patron’s excellence, connect them with good people to know in the courts, the temples, the civic professions, etc. Bad ones give cast-off crap and do as little as possible for their clients.

There‘s a lot more I could spin up, but I’m tired, so let’s look at the social context of adventuring. Clients‘ accomplishments give credit to their patron, which means that patrons who can afford to are always looking for clients who can do something distinctive. Performers, gladiators, lawyers and doctors, teachers, they all help their patron rise in prestige. And so do those who can venture into the wastes, negotiate with outsiders who can be dealt with, triumph over those who can’t, and return with interesting things that weren’t nailed down firmly enough. Doing PC stuff is a well-known, familiar, expected part of the society.

And there you go. No slavery, lots of shitshow happening in routine exploitation, social and dungeoneering action both routine, room for lots of interesting weirdness swiped from history in ways learnable from Grand Master Robert E. Howard. Oh, and note there‘s no necessary ethnic or species or gender exclusion required. Women can be both patrons and clients, people don’t worry much about gender diversity, nonhumans may have extra work burdens but can be part of this system too. Anyway, enough for now.

 

[Umbran]

I like having unambiguous bad guys. But anything that makes them such is now off the table in official products?

I can make a bad guy unambiguously bad, by making their individual actions bad, rather than create an entire culture of that badness, and make the ones I need for the PCs to beat up members of that culture.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can make a bad guy unambiguously bad, by making their individual actions bad, rather than create an entire culture of that badness, and make the ones I need for the PCs to beat up members of that culture.

you can do this for sure, but then you don't have Roman Empire levels of epic empire expansion and enslavement, gladiatorial arenas (they would at least need to be all volunteer or something) as a potential campaign backdrop.

I am fine if someone wants to make a campaign world where all the evils are at an individual level. Campaign worlds at their best are thought experiments and that sounds like a good thought experiment to me. But I also think we need to have room for society wide evils in a setting two (including things like slavery)

 

[Faolyn]

No less than three different people have specifically told me that if I didn't like something in the material, I should find another hobby, and that I would not be welcome to play at certain public events because I wasn't comfortable with the material.

I want to expand on this one, possibly.

I, personally, don't want to ever play a PbtA game that has a sex move. I find them uncomfortable and disturbing for several reasons. Unlike many other games, these sex moves are built into the game, which means if a PbtA game has a sex move, the entire game is unavailable to me. I went to a con and someone were to be running, say, a Monster Hearts game, I wouldn't play it, nor would I feel unwelcome. I can go play the sex move-free game Monster of the Week (which I'll be running in a month or two, in fact). If I were playing a con game of MotW and someone decided to try to have sex with my character, then it's that person doing that, not the game itself.

But!

Monster Hearts is a distinct game unto itself. There are PbtA games that don't have sex moves, which means I have plenty of choices. Apparently, even the original Apocalypse World game has removed those moves from its newest edition, although I confess that I haven't really checked.

However, we've been talking about Dark Sun.

Dark Sun is not a game unto itself. D&D is the game. Dark Sun is just a setting in the game. Which means that if I were to go to a con and saw there was a D&D game going on and wanted to join in, and whoops, it turned out to be a Dark Sun game with slavery in it--well, I would feel cornered here.

D&D is also fairly unique in that if something exists in one setting, it can very easily be brought into every setting; it's practically a generic system like GURPS or SWADE in that manner. There are spells named after Greyhawk people in the Realms and monsters that started out as Realms-specific (thanks, Ed Greenwood) have spread to every other setting. Dark Sun monsters (and one of its races) ended up in 5e Spelljammer, and some Spelljammer monsters ended up being generic for all settings. And of course Ravenloft steals from everywhere. If you're fine with the idea of a satyr PC, you're probably not going to insist that they exist only in Theros--and, indeed, they no longer exist only in Theros; they're part of Mordenkainen's multiverse now, openly available in all worlds. I doubt that anyone is going to say that you can only play a Lunar sorcerer if you're in a Dragonlance game, or an Arcana cleric only in the Realms. One of the games I'm in that takes place in the Realms has a warforged PC--and not one that came from Eberron, either, but one apparently built in Maztica (we're still finding out his exact origins). And another game I'm in, which is playing the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure, has a leonin PC. Between spells, planar travel, and spelljamming ships, the idea of traveling between settings is baked into the system. D&D has been like this from the start, what with a Boot Hill PC winding up in Greyhawk.

So hey, there's slavery in Dark Sun. And not the type of slavery that involves a couple of bad guys doing bad guy things to the shock and dismay of all the Good People around, but the type that's considered the acceptable norm for normal society, where the only thing stopping the PCs from buying and selling slaves themselves is a DM willing to say no. Which means that sort of thing is, by D&D's standards, going to end up everywhere else.

So this isn't like the Monster Hearts/Monster of the Week deal, where a rule in one game simply doesn't exist in the other. Even though both games use the same basic chassis, they're different games. Instead, all D&D is D&D. It's not even a slippery slope here. It's part of the game.

 

[Umbran]

you can do this for sure, but then you don't have Roman Empire levels of epic empire expansion and enslavement,
gladiatorial arenas (they would at least need to be all volunteer or something) as a potential campaign backdrop.

Yes, well, I've been gaming since 1982, and not used Roman Empire levels of slavery, nor gladiatorial arenas, so I don't think I'll miss 'em, myself.

I am fine if someone wants to make a campaign world where all the evils are at an individual level.

Do remember, we are not talking about individual tables - do what you want in your own game.

WotC and Paizo have apparently chosen to step away from slavery tropes. This somehow gets blown out to be some universal prohibition.

 

[Faolyn]

My problem is more with what is considered controversial. Slavery and cannibalism were easy markers for evil to me, precisely because they're universally condemned. They're the opposite of controversial. No one is advocating for them or making excuses, unlike sexual assault. The latter also directly impacts a lot of people. But when was the last time a player lost someone to cannibalism?

There are people who are advocating for slavery now, though, or at least the discrimination against and subjugation of Black people (and sometimes other people as well).

Cannibalism is also kind of weird because of ritual cannibalism, which is part of the of several real-life cultures, often part of the grieving process. Interestingly, the 3x book Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead actually discusses this--people who engage in cannibalism generally wind up as a hungry dead of one sort or another after death because it's an act of depraved evil, but those who engage in cultural cannibalism don't; it's not an evil act then.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes, well, I've been gaming since 1982, and not used Roman Empire levels of slavery, nor gladiatorial arenas, so I don't think I'll miss 'em, myself.

Which is absolutely fine. If you have no interest in these elements, I get that. A lot of my campaigns are more inspired by the ancient world and Rome than by medieval Europe, so I tend to have more of this stuff.

Do remember, we are not talking about individual tables - do what you want in your own game.

WotC and Paizo have apparently chosen to step away from slavery tropes. This somehow gets blown out to be some universal prohibition.

Again, if an individual publisher wants to shy away from something I have no issue (though if you are going to make Dark Sun, I say go all the way and include things like Slavery---just my preference). Where I am concerned, and I do realize there are a wide range of views being put forth here so this doesn't apply to all the posts or anything, is when people seem to be saying those things either should be taken off the table in terms of what is acceptable for publishers to include in a setting. I would personally rather be in a hobby environment where publishers like Paizo and WOTC feel as though they are able to include this stuff if they want to. I feel like we have moved too far in the direction of taking out interesting material.