D&D General Just sweeping dirty dishes under the rug: D&D, Sexism, and the '70s

[Micah Sweet]

People without a lived experience of being a marginalized person speak from utter ignorance and as such, do not have any clue about what they're talking about.

Aren't there folks who are not part of these marginalized groups calling out what they consider to be harm to them?

 

[Steampunkette]

C'mon, you've certainly been playing enough D&D by this point to know to bring along at least some form of fire or acid damage for situations like this.

No metagaming! I rolled a 6 on my Knowledge: Internet check and I stand by my terrible rolls.

 

[Bedrockgames]

They were entirely in good faith and sincere. I've been trying to get you to have an honest dialogue.

I am happy to have an honest dialogue. But I also don't have to answer every questions a poster asks if I think the questions have another rhetorical purpose

There were 8 or 9 literal questions, but they boil down to about 5.

If you want to ask five, I will answer them. But I am not going to have a back and forth over it. I will give you my response to those questions

 

[Mannahnin]

I am happy to have an honest dialogue. But I also don't have to answer every questions a poster asks if I think the questions have another rhetorical purpose


If you want to ask five, I will answer them. But I am not going to have a back and forth over it. I will give you my response to those questions

1. What's "narrow" about the variety of dark content shown in, again for specific, real-world examples, Midnight, Xoth, Lamentations, Hyperborea, Viking Death Squad, and Shadowdark?

2. Who has gotten aggressively dogpiled, and [3] exactly for what? What's "obvious" to you doesn't seem apparent to me. The books I see getting published seem to show the opposite. People can and do publish all sorts of stuff.

I think he's [Kyle Brinks] talking about trying to sell mature content to a general audience, and about their own publishing policy about portraying particularly brutal subject matter, like slavery. I think the particular "problematic" elements they're mostly dealing with are A) slavery, B) cannibalism, and C) Psionics, just logistically because they haven't figured out a way to do it that they like.

4. What's your alternative theory?

5. You think writing for LotFP tars one by association with edgy content? Or is the association issue the fact that James Raggi III strongly supports ZS, a writer who's a notoriously abusive and nasty narcissist, and apparent domestic abuser?

 

[Gradine]

Aren't there folks who are not part of these marginalized groups calling out what they consider to be harm to them?

Yes, typically to amplify the voices from the marginalized groups calling out said harm that tend to be otherwise ignored or dismissed, like the persistent myth that only white people were complaining about OA.

 

[Gradine]

No metagaming! I rolled a 6 on my Knowledge: Internet check and I stand by my terrible rolls.

Your DM shouldn't be making you make Knowledge rolls for knowledge your character should definitely already know!

 

[Faolyn]

Where's the evidence? Dark settings abound. Midnight, Xoth, Hyperborea, Carcosa, Lamentations of the Flame Princess (whose modules far exceed in darkness anything TSR or WotC ever published), Viking Death Squad, Shadowdark...

And if you move away from fantasy, there's even more options.

I do little game reviews for my group (in the desperate hope that they'll latch onto things other than traditional D&D-style fantasy), and I just finished one for a dystopian FitD game called a|state. It contains things like abuse of common people by the authorities, sexual exploitation, child soldiers, eugenics, and Soylent Green-style cannibalism as a necessary food source, but it's also careful to treat these things as bad things, and the actual point of the game is for the players to try to make the world a better place for the people around them.

So yes, it's more than possible to have a very dark setting. Including ones where, unlike a|state, you can't make things better. It's just that nowadays, it's better to say that these are actually bad things, not things that are supposed to be bad but are presented as actually really cool.

 

[Bedrockgames]

They were entirely in good faith and sincere. I've been trying to get you to have an honest dialogue.

There were 8 or 9 literal questions, but they boil down to about 5.

Edit:

1. What's "narrow" about the variety of dark content shown in, again for specific, real-world examples, Midnight, Xoth, Lamentations, Hyperborea, Viking Death Squad, and Shadowdark?

Well Midnight came out ages ago. But I wasn't saying these things don't exist. However can you provide more context to my 'narrow' remark. I want to answer his as accurately as I can and I can't remember the statement I made about narrowness exactly to do so. I mean Lamentations exists, but most designers and publishers wouldn't want to take the kind of social punishment that goes with making a product line like that. There is a real cost of putting out material people deem edgy. And it feels like it didn't used to be this way.

2. Who has gotten aggressively dogpiled, and [3] exactly for what? What's "obvious" to you doesn't seem apparent to me. The books I see getting published seem to show the opposite. People can and do publish all sorts of stuff.

Lots of people have been agressively dogpiled. It happens all the time on social media. And it happens all the time to designers when they put stuff out. Again, this is something that is so self evident to anyone online, I just think obvious is the only language to use. Everybody reading this knows what i am talking about here.

4. What's your alternative theory?

It isn't that we disagree on what the issues largely are, but I think we disagree on the why. I definitely think they are avoiding a game that deals with slavery because they know in the current climate in gaming culture, people will see it through the worst lens. They will equate its presence with an endorsement.

5. You think writing for LotFP tars one by association with edgy content? Or is the association issue the fact that James Raggi III strongly supports ZS, a writer who's a notoriously abusive and nasty narcissist, and apparent domestic abuser?

I think it is both. Before this even happened, one could get guilt by association with LoTFP. But I was just using it as an example of what happens. People in the gaming community have learned to glom on to judging people based on who they write for, who they know, etc. And association with a person is being seen as being as bad as being that person when they have done or said something deemed bad. I think the failure to make that distinction is the problem. If there is an issue around a figure in teh gaming community I am not saying people shouldn't have opinions or not express their anger. But guilt by association has a very dark history for a reason. You are socially isolating and punishing people not for what they have done, but for who they have had dealings with.

 

[Steampunkette]

Your DM shouldn't be making you make Knowledge rolls for knowledge your character should definitely already know!

Yeah, well, DAVE is a dick and I saw someone responding to a cockamamie spread of horse hockey and felt the need to rebuke it... What can I say?

 

[Gradine]

Yeah, well, DAVE is a dick and I saw someone responding to a cockamamie spread of horse hockey and felt the need to rebuke it... What can I say?

Directly confront open bigotry all day every day. Leave the mealy-mouthed sealions in the dustbin of history where they belong