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

[MGibster]

None of this encourages WotC to facilitate things though.

Should the equipment list in the phb include the prices for various slaves?

The only thing I see WotC facilitating is butt kicking for goodness by defeating slavers and freeing people. Or is there something I'm missing? As for the prices, no. Why would they include that?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I read the whole thing and I elected to quote the most important part of your argument. D&D's "public" facing in the form of a book is no different than a novel. It isn't plastered where just anyone could see it. You have to either pick up the book or actively participate in a D&D game.


None of this has anything to do with D&D being public or private. Who cares if WotC doesn't know how people are going to use their materials? What does that have to do with anything?

What it has to do with anything, is because WoTC is making a public facing set of rules, they can't be as free with content as someone in their home game. You can cater content to what is acceptable at your table. WoTC can't. And it would be absurd that while selling game kits to schools to for middle school teachers to make DnD club, if they just put in any R or X rated content that they felt like.

Yes, it might make it more appealing to you in specific, but it would hurt the game writ large if they push certain themes or details. They aren't going to include the details of a child sacrifice to Baphomet in the game, because it isn't a private game between 5 to 7 people. It is a public game consumed by millions.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You are completely beside the point and arguing something completely different.

In the context of the world, and how people respond to magic, there is no difference between history and D&D. There are people alive today, at this very moment, that believe tornadoes happen because of folks moral failing, or who hunt down and literally stone to death penis stealing sorcerers.

If you want to argue about how many hit points a big tent revival preacher can heal, I can't argue with you, but that number is entirely beside the point for those for whom that magic is real.

So the morality of a society has nothing at all to do with their available resources, which was the original reason I brought up magic as technology? Historical societies were just horrid for no other reason than they were? Because, I'll note, while there are individual people who stone sorcerers to death today... in medieval Europe it was a town event to stone a sorcerer to death. So, all that changed is that a lot of us just no longer felt like killing people to make ourselves feel safer?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I wonder if the slaver thing is for two meta reasons a need to justify them being called evil and having a reason to take the player alive if the players lose

I did early on posit that the major reason the majority of bad guys in DnD end up using slaves, is that they need a reason to have taken prisoners from the town/village/caravan so that the PCs could rescue them. On a Doylist level it makes sense. I just think we could cut it out of 85% of the monsters that currently do that, and still have plenty of slavery, and we certainly don't need to expand it into something done by the good kingdoms because it is "historically realistic"

 

[Micah Sweet]

What it has to do with anything, is because WoTC is making a public facing set of rules, they can't be as free with content as someone in their home game. You can cater content to what is acceptable at your table. WoTC can't. And it would be absurd that while selling game kits to schools to for middle school teachers to make DnD club, if they just put in any R or X rated content that they felt like.

Yes, it might make it more appealing to you in specific, but it would hurt the game writ large if they push certain themes or details. They aren't going to include the details of a child sacrifice to Baphomet in the game, because it isn't a private game between 5 to 7 people. It is a public game consumed by millions.

To be fair, it's not because they're a public game. If that were all it is, a lot of existing RPGs wouldn't pass the Chaosmancer Test and therefore shouldn't be in the public eye. It's because they're the public game, dedicating to selling to as many people as possible and willing to compromise however they feel is needed to broaden their already massive fan base for maximum profits.

Other than that caveat, you are of course right.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So the morality of a society has nothing at all to do with their available resources, which was the original reason I brought up magic as technology? Historical societies were just horrid for no other reason than they were? Because, I'll note, while there are individual people who stone sorcerers to death today... in medieval Europe it was a town event to stone a sorcerer to death. So, all that changed is that a lot of us just no longer felt like killing people to make ourselves feel safer?

I'm pretty sure a lot of people still feel like killing each other, and if anything it's easier to do so now. "Othering" is in full force today just as it has always been. The forms it can take have simply expanded.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I did early on posit that the major reason the majority of bad guys in DnD end up using slaves, is that they need a reason to have taken prisoners from the town/village/caravan so that the PCs could rescue them. On a Doylist level it makes sense. I just think we could cut it out of 85% of the monsters that currently do that, and still have plenty of slavery, and we certainly don't need to expand it into something done by the good kingdoms because it is "historically realistic"

While certainly many societies don't need and will not have "hard" slavery, I'm not sure there's such a thing as a "good" kingdom in a moral sense. Every polity is looking out for their own self-interest, and from a modern perspective (which I assume you are coming from here), any literal kingdom is going to be termed as "problematic" in some ways.

This is why I don't look at these things from a modern perspective unless the issue in question is a moral issue for my players (ie, I or they can't stomach the presence of an element, which is an issue in a few places) or a practical issue at the table (some degree of abstraction is needed for viable play). And of course, we all draw our own lines for this stuff.

 

[MGibster]

What it has to do with anything, is because WoTC is making a public facing set of rules, they can't be as free with content as someone in their home game. You can cater content to what is acceptable at your table. WoTC can't. And it would be absurd that while selling game kits to schools to for middle school teachers to make DnD club, if they just put in any R or X rated content that they felt like.

I haven't seen WotC putting R or X rated content in the game though. Although, as we've pointed out, they have all sorts of nasty things in the game. Curse of Strahd has genocide, domestic abuse, child abuse, drug abuse, and there's some pretty icky implications with Strahd's attitude towards consent. There's even a holy man who creates what's essentially a child bride in the hopes that Strahd will be happy with her and leave other women alone.

I agree with you that WotC shouldn't put overly graphic material in the game beacuse it doesn't fit the tone of what most of us are looking for in a high fantasy game. Our disagreement is that I don't believe slavery is a rated R or X topic. I don't have a problem with an evil organization, like those dirty Lloth worshipping jerks in the Underdark, being slavers. Not even when it comes to teenagers playing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I haven't seen WotC putting R or X rated content in the game though. Although, as we've pointed out, they have all sorts of nasty things in the game. Curse of Strahd has genocide, domestic abuse, child abuse, drug abuse, and there's some pretty icky implications with Strahd's attitude towards consent. There's even a holy man who creates what's essentially a child bride in the hopes that Strahd will be happy with her and leave other women alone.

I agree with you that WotC shouldn't put overly graphic material in the game beacuse it doesn't fit the tone of what most of us are looking for in a high fantasy game. Our disagreement is that I don't believe slavery is a rated R or X topic. I don't have a problem with an evil organization, like those dirty Lloth worshipping jerks in the Underdark, being slavers. Not even when it comes to teenagers playing.

They teach about slavery in grade school now. Part of the curriculum.

 

[Cadence]

They teach about slavery in grade school now. Part of the curriculum.

And this is really an IRL discussion we don't want to have here. Because the parts that are taught and how they're taught really vary....