D&D General D&D Assumptions Ain't What They Used To Be

[FrozenNorth]

If I were a betting man, if I were to be a fly in the wall watching a bunch of 14 year olds play D&D I bet I'd see them making some of the same juvenile sex offender jokes/situations I did way back in 1990.

I sincerely doubt it. To quote @Clint_L , when I was in high school, we were a bunch of straight 14-year-old white boys playing D&D (not from Nanaimo).

Nowadays? It’s lot more likely that the group will have a girl at the table, or a guy who’s out, or a friend with two dads, or a kid who was born in North Africa.

And then they’re less likely to make rape jokes, or derogatory comments about homosexuals.

It’s pretty easy to say that kids these days are just being performative about what they say. I think that being exposed to different people makes them less likely to reduce others to stereotypes in the first place.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I do not think the sand is core to darksun more that the world has gone to a mundane hell its post-apocalypse by nature and super strange with a lot of the stranger fantasy inspirations being core.
it puts psionic as an important in-universe element.
no gods meddling to the best of people's knowledge.

I perceive your point but regardless I sadly care so something must be done in my eyes.

You care that WotC addresses this issue? It can't be anyone else?

 

[MGibster]

Nowadays? It’s lot more likely that the group will have a girl at the table, or a guy who’s out, or a friend with two dads, or a kid who was born in North Africa.

And teenager girls, boys with two dads, or a teen from North Africa don't make stupid jokes? I very much doubt that. I suspect many of them make the same or similar jokes that we made in 1989. I didn't have any black players in a game of mine until 2017 when I suddenly had two, and out of the five players three of them were gay. I was a bit surprised that the juvenile humor was pretty much in line with what I was used to. The biggest change is the sexual innuendos and jokes were more likely to have a queer bent to them.

 

[payn]

Hey, if you don’t want to admit that bangs looked stupid in the ‘00s, that’s on you!

They are not wrong.

 

[Marandahir]

I do not think the sand is core to darksun more that the world has gone to a mundane hell its post-apocalypse by nature and super strange with a lot of the stranger fantasy inspirations being core.
it puts psionic as an important in-universe element.
no gods meddling to the best of people's knowledge.

I meant more so crapsack desert world ruled by evil Dragon Sorcerer-King where the city is painted pretty and nice but is actually horrific underneath the layers and if you go out into the wasteland everything is trying to kill you.

It's less Psionic, but it hits a lot of the same tropes. Probably because both are drawing on Semitic Bronze Age City-State Desert Empires for inspiration.

That all said, I said Amonkhet is the closest MtG setting to it, not that I thought it was sufficiently close. My point was more that there is NO sufficiently close MtG set and trying to make a NEW MtG set that was like Dark Sun but different at this stage would be counter-productive if the goal was in part syncretisation with D&D. Innistrad only exists as its own plane because (1) Ulgrotha wasn't Gothic Horror ENOUGH to be twisted into the setting of the 2011-2012 sets and (2) WotC had a policy at the time of "don't cross the streams" between their two franchises. They wanted an original Magic Setting they could bring their Planeswalker protagonists to for Magic Story reasons, and Ravenloft would carry a lot of baggage they don't want to mess with. Case in point: Guildmaster's Guide to Ravenloft showed that Acquisitions, Inc. has an office on Ravnica, but this office (and everything else D&D original) is non-canon to Magic Story, because that would open the can of worms that the Magic Planes and the D&D Planes are one larger story, and then we get into weird cosmological questions for their story and characters that they really don't want to open either property up to. More so, any crossover is really for Rule of Fun rather than making a larger meta-narrative. Strixhaven was DEFINITELY created in part with D&D in-mind, but not so to bring the narrative of Strixhaven in the context of the Phyrexian invasions plot into D&D, so much as bringing magic school tropes setting, the platonic ideal of Strixhaven, into D&D.

 

[Marandahir]

They are not wrong.

And starting the third lap, Sebulba's in the lead, followed by SKYWALKER!

 

[Clint_L]

Fine with me, if that's what they decide to do.

What if they decide to do something that you're not comfortable DMing? At my school games, there are just hard lines, because I like my job and want to keep it. But even at my home games, there are some directions I would just veto if they came up, though our group is pretty copacetic so it's never been an issue.

 

[MGibster]

What if they decide to do something that you're not comfortable DMing? At my school games, there are just hard lines, because I like my job. But even at my home games, there are some directions I would just veto if they came up, though our group is pretty copacetic so it's never been an issue.

I ended a Curse of Strahd campaign prematurely because of the player character's actions. They came across a ruined village and noticed a woman was spying on them from a hidden location. She was armed with a dagger, so they decided the best thing to do was to kill her. After the fight was over I thanked them for participating, but I didn't know where else to take the game after they murdered an innocent person without good reason.

 

[Clint_L]

I ended a Curse of Strahd campaign prematurely because of the player character's actions. They came across a ruined village and noticed a woman was spying on them from a hidden location. She was armed with a dagger, so they decided the best thing to do was to kill her. After the fight was over I thanked them for participating, but I didn't know where else to take the game after they murdered an innocent person without good reason.

The first time I played Lost Mine of Phandelver I was shamed by my group because I

Spoiler

attacked the Nothic beneath the Rebrand Hideout.

I didn't even think to negotiate with it; I was a paladin and it was a creepy monster living in a ditch full of bones.

 

[payn]

The first time I played Lost Mine of Phandelver I was shamed by my group because I

Spoiler

attacked the Nothic beneath the Rebrand Hideout.

I didn't even think to negotiate with it; I was a paladin and it was a creepy monster living in a ditch full of bones.

Sometimes you deal, sometimes you dont. Though, your situation has a much different context.