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

[Warpiglet-7]

I think it is very important to know your audience.

We used to play evil characters some in college. We were conquerors. I never remember anyone wanting to pretend to rape npcs or unpleasantness like that but it was surely action movie badness.

Mostly we fought feuds and sought treasure and burgled. We did it for ourselves and killed anyone in our way. Our good characters did some Of that too ostensibly for heroic reasons.

But general freedom of choice is a must. I just don’t choose to play with folks that want to detail torture and rape. No thanks.

But bad stuff to fight against? Hell yeah. Evil cults, slavers, barbaric orcish hordes etc. totally.

If it had to be rated g it’s not for me/us.

It’s toned down if the kids play. But no hand wringing about killing or bad people with bad ideas. They make good enemies.

 

[Lanefan]

For slavery, I honestly think it is more a marriage of convenient tropes than anything else. Consider:

1) The heroes need to rescue people.
2) Therefore, people need to be in danger from outside forces
3) It is dramatic to be too late, and show up in the aftermath of an attack.
3a) But you still want to rescue people, therefore the enemy took people.
Query: Why would the outside forces who destroyed the town and killed some people, take others who can then be rescued?

And the obvious answer is forced labor, aka Slavery.

One obvious answer of several, yes.

The captives could instead be next week's menu. Or next week's sacrifices to the captors' God of Nasty Evilness. Or being held for ransom.

I've no problem at all with slavery being in the game, but it doesn't have to be the only option as to what to do with captives.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One obvious answer of several, yes.

The captives could instead be next week's menu. Or next week's sacrifices to the captors' God of Nasty Evilness. Or being held for ransom.

I've no problem at all with slavery being in the game, but it doesn't have to be the only option as to what to do with captives.

Most of which are if anything more evil than slavery. Never really understood why slavery is somehow a worse evil than cannibalism or human sacrifice.

 

[MGibster]

Most of which are if anything more evil than slavery. Never really understood why slavery is somehow a worse evil than cannibalism or human sacrifice.

For some people it's a bit too real in that it touches on issues that continue to this day. It's the same reason I can accept science fiction/fantasy violence and terrible things but didn't care to run a game of Twilight 2000 given the situation in the Urkaine right now.

 

[Dausuul]

I mean, I suppose if you think anything goes is a requirment. I dont. I have a small list of things and slavery and sexual assault are on it. I have no idea why many a gamer find these topics irresistible to their gaming.

I didn't say it wasn't possible to stop PCs from doing awful things. The DM and the players can stop them easily. But if the DM and the players choose not to, there's no way to create a setting which will do it instead.

...I mean, I guess you could have a setting in which some immensely powerful psionic entity simply halted all such actions before they could be committed. Whether the presence of such an entity is more or less horrific than the absence of one is an interesting question.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Eh. I think the gap between back then and today is that today, whether we use aggressive language or not, people are less shy about simply drawing table rules and restrictions and expecting their follow players not to act out juvenile sex offender fantasies.

Certainly part of the assumptions behind the article are a greater level of societal tolerance for that sort of behavior (particularly in fiction, like the aforementioned Revenge of the Nerds or Porky's), and part of it is the then-more prevalent paradigm of running a game as a neutral world simulation, and enforcing consequences for misbehavior diegetically rather than through straightforward out of game conversation. This follows from stuff like Gary's advice to strike misbehaving players with bolts from the blue.

I do think it is a better and more useful approach to handle these sorts of things with adult, out of game conversations about expectations and boundaries, rather than refusing to discuss them and only imposing sanctions in-game, which can come off as either passive aggressive or tacitly approving of these kind of shenanigans.

That's funny, I was thinking of those exact movies when responding to this topic. Also very true, back then there was a diagetic focus on punishment rather than a "away from table" talk about it. Although, in defense of players in general I haven't had anyone try anything like that in literal ages.

 

[payn]

I didn't say it wasn't possible to stop PCs from doing awful things. The DM and the players can stop them easily. But if the DM and the players choose not to, there's no way to create a setting which will do it instead.

...I mean, I guess you could have a setting in which some immensely powerful psionic entity simply halted all such actions before they could be committed. Whether the presence of such an entity is more or less horrific than the absence of one is an interesting question.

Yikes.

 

[Weiley31]

I mean, I guess you could have a setting in which some immensely powerful psionic entity simply halted all such actions before they could be committed. Whether the presence of such an entity is more or less horrific than the absence of one is an interesting question.

SO That's HOW IT HAPPENED IN PATHFINDER 2!!!

 

[Chaosmancer]

One obvious answer of several, yes.

The captives could instead be next week's menu. Or next week's sacrifices to the captors' God of Nasty Evilness. Or being held for ransom.

I've no problem at all with slavery being in the game, but it doesn't have to be the only option as to what to do with captives.

Yep, those are perfect OTHER options. But I think this is part of why people react so viscerally to the idea of taking out slavery, they don't think of those other options.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Most of which are if anything more evil than slavery. Never really understood why slavery is somehow a worse evil than cannibalism or human sacrifice.

"For the next 30 years, I will torture and belittle you, then if you have children I will spend 50 years torturing and belittling them, and then if they have children, my children will spend 50 years torturing and belittling them, and then..."

versus

"In three days we will slit your throat, rip out your heart and burn it."

Seems pretty obvious to me.