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

[Staffan]

I kind of suspect this might be the most important reason Dark Sun hasn't made a comeback.

I recall someone at Wizards of the Coast (could have been Ray Winninger, but I can't be hedgehogged to check) saying something along the lines of "Only about one project in three we start working on make it to publication." I have a fairly strong suspicion that 5e Dark Sun was a casualty of this process relatively early in the 5e publication history. Something along the lines of:
1. Dark Sun is one of our more popular older settings, so maybe we should do that.
2. Plus, that would give us a good "in" for psionics, and we said we wouldn't do settings unless there was something mechanically different about them. (Note: this seems not to be a criterion anymore, but it was mentioned back in the day in the context of Greyhawk being a setting using some more old-schoolish rules.)
3. OK, Bob, you start writing a treatment for the setting material and lore and such. Mike, you start working on psionics.
4. Oh great, you have the skeleton of a psionics system. Let's put it out in Unearthed Arcana.
5. Dang, I guess the fans didn't like that one. Let's try again.
6. Nope, that didn't work out either.
7. Dang, this edition sure blew up. Lots of young fans. Maybe we should take a look at our standards for publication.
8. Bob, what's that you got there? The Dark Sun treatment I asked you to write? Hmm... hmm... yeah, this isn't going to fly in the New World Order.
9. Tell you what, between not being able to get psionics going and sensitivity stuff, let's just drop this Dark Sun idea for the time being. More trouble than it's worth.

From my (limited) knowledge of Dark Sun--which does not include anything from the novels or adventures--slavery was just treated as another part of the setting, not as an evil to be fought. I think that's the actual big issue with the setting. There's little the PCs can do about it, especially at early levels.

Slavery was definitely treated as an evil thing, but as an entrenched one. The adventure included in the original boxed set starts the PCs out as slaves being transported across the desert. The caravan gets attacked by elf raiders, which leads to the PCs being "freed"... right out in the middle of the desert and barely being able to get a waterskin each from the wreck.

Then you have the first separate adventure, Freedom, where the PCs are enslaved and forced to work on the Ziggurat in Tyr. The picture painted of slavery is not a pretty one. And at the culmination of the adventure, the former king of Tyr is killed (by NPCs), and slavery is abolished in Tyr. And this is the point where it gets a little complicated. Later material, like the Tyr sourcebook, shows that while this is overall good, it is not without its problems. For one thing, you now have a large destitute underclass of former slaves, which is a destabilizing influence. You also have lots of resources (farmland, the iron mines) that are being abandoned because of the lack of workers (and the nobles don't really have the resources to employ their former slaves). You also have other city-states who see what happened in Tyr, and decide that they will not be having any of that, leading to a short-lived war between Tyr and the closest city-state, Urik (with the result being that Tyr defeats Urik in the field, but when they try to follow their success up and attack Urik itself in order to free their slaves as well, Tyr gets soundly routed). So the abolition of slavery is described as a positive, with an asterisk.

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.

It's a well-known fact that Internet trolls actually get stronger when exposed to flames.

 

[soviet]

So we can definitely blame Hasbro for anything we don't like about WotC? Fair enough.

Straight in with a failed gotcha. The question was why WotC would publish something then, that they wouldn't publish later.

 

[Gradine]

It's a well-known fact that Internet trolls actually get stronger when exposed to flames.

 

[Gradine]

Which no doubt he stared at the entire time as you were voting.

I wish that I could both laugh and vomit react to this post at the same time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Straight in with a failed gotcha. The question was why WotC would publish something then, that they wouldn't publish later.

No gotcha. That's how I really feel. Most of the things I liked from WotC predate or shortly follow the Hasbro takeover. Perhaps Hasbro is the problem, at least as as I'm concerned.

 

[Mannahnin]

Even Lamentations has been around forever at this point too. Well part of the problem with this question is it is very hard to point to games that were never made, which is kind of the point. All I can say is I think most publishers are going to think twice if they venture into anything dark or edgy (which again the big example to me, and the strongest evidence, is how WOTC came out said they couldn't do dark sun because it is too problematic). It is pretty evident in these conversations that any setting that deals with slavery for example, is going to have to be very careful because people are going to take a microscope to it (and I think that is the part that causes the chilling effect: publishers know things will be taken out of context and optics are going to matter more than the substance)

Lamentations is a current publisher, putting out current stuff.

Yes, it's hard to prove a negative. If there are games you're aware of that got shelved or failed their kickstarters, though, especially because of some public outcry in the gaming community against them, you could cite them. If there are specific forms of content that people have told you they're afraid to publish, I'd like to hear what those are.

People have gotten dogpiled on any thread dealing with these issues. Take your pick, whether it is a thread about orcs, about whether races should be species, or dungeon delving as a stand in for colonialism.

What? This seems like you dragging in unrelated issues and changing the subject.

We're talking about dark or edgy content, and you have made a positive claim that creators have been dogpiled for publishing it, are afraid to publish it, and are exercising prior restraint now in not doing so. I've cited several specific examples of dark and edgy games, including LotFP which is probably the edgiest publisher short of jokes like FATAL.

The thing that was notable to me, to bring it back to the video I made in 2016 that got brought up, is stuff that was said as a joke ten years ago when people raised concerns, became real (like the whole equating dungeon delving with colonial conquest and wringing hands over it). And I am not trying to dredge that topic up. But those were incredibly difficult topics to wade into without people really going after you if you questioned some of the assumptions that were beginning to take root.

Noting that Keep on the Borderlands, for example, comes off a bit as a metaphor for the American Westward expansion and somewhat colonialist goes back well before that. And it's not about hand-wringing, IME.

Gus from Dungeon of Signs, a well-respected OSR creator, mentioned it in passing in 2014, in his very evenhanded and sober article about the module. But it was a topic of occasional discussion before that.

Again, everyone knows what I am talking about on this front. I don't see any value in finding individual examples of people who were dogpiled and resurrecting the dogpiling they suffered. You asked the question and I gave you my answer. I am not trying to be evasive

You made a specific claim. That people publishing darker or edgier game materials have been dogpiled for the content of their games. No, "everyone" most certainly does not know what you're talking about. If there are such games where this happened, you should be able to cite examples. You don't have to get into a ton of details if you don't want to. I can use google if you can name a few.

I think it's tricky for them to figure out how to portray a world where slavery is endemic and routine, and the players are nowhere near powerful enough to change that, and sell it to a general audience age 12 and up. Plus, ya know, cannibalism and psionics.

I think it really isn't. I was my teens when the first Dark Sun came out, and I totally understood it. I got how to play and use a setting like that. Again I think we are over invested in the search for problems here. You are taking away something that was a pretty big part of human history and ought to be part of fantasy world building. Cannibal halflings I just don't think that is a real problem for people. I don't recall anyone being phased by that. Part of my issue with how we approach this is there is a real 'thank of the children' argument. But Dark Sun isn't a setting that is intended for the very young. It is intended for audiences who are familiar with things like the Mad Max movies.

Sure. But WotC doesn't do "mature audiences" settings.

Back when TSR was cannibalizing their own sales with setting proliferation, they made a lot of settings which had relatively narrow audiences. WotC has, particularly during 5th ed, focused on trying to publish books which will sell to as large a share of their audience as possible. This is also the reason they haven't pumped out books at nearly as fast a rate as they used to during 3.x and 4e. They don't want overwhelm the buyers with the release schedule. They want as many of the fans as possible to pick up each book.

I answered the questions.

I asked for you to substantiate a couple of your claims with specific examples and you've declined.

I have no ability to evaluate the accuracy of unsupported assertions, other than through what I've seen, and the implication of examples not being provided.

 

[Voadam]

I mean, let's be honest, The Book of Vile Darkness is a terrible supplement even if you ignore all of the extremely atrocious and objectionable narrative content contained within. Like... just the game design stuff is bad. It makes a worthwhile museum piece, perhaps a polemic on how to absolutely not introduce mature themes into your tabletop RPG, but I struggle to see what value it could possibly hold otherwise.

3e Fiend lord stats in a certain CR range that can be taken on by high level PCs. For 3.0 I think it was the only real discussion of fiend lords.

 

[Mannahnin]

It's true. Watch some ads for games like Space Marine or even Warhammer 40k itself. They present the Space Marines especially in the most positive light as heroic saviors of humanity. They do the same for Sisters of Battle. The fiction most people see, especially parents, are just shows the Imperium as a bunch of good guys defending humanity.


There's a little overlap between the two. Replacing the topless Daemonette models sculpted by Juan Diaz could be seen as both family friendly and helping with inclusivity. But GW has both made attempts to make their IP a little more family friendly and inclusive over the last few years. When the fiction was created, it was just a thin veneer justifying why your little metal miniatures were trying to murder my little metal miniatures. But since the setting is used for novels and all sorts of other media ventures, they've been dialing back the grimdark for a few years now. They kind of painted themselves into a decidedly non-family friendly atmosphere and are slowly working their way out.

No. That's the satire going. The grimdark is still there.

Not true at all.

They replaced the cheesecake Juan Diaz deamonettes with plastic versions of the original, more alien daemonettes from the realm of chaos days. They've returned things to their RT versions quite a few times when they've made things plastic. One of the Daemonette HQs released maybe 4 years ago is playing a guy's innards like a harp.

Yeah, the thing where The Imperium's Brave Defenders are portrayed superficially bright and shiny for the kids (while the background fluff remained dark) reminds me of the 2E 40k 90s days.

 

[Belen]

Which no doubt he stared at the entire time as you were voting.

I hope it was my sneakers they were staring at.

I had no intention of role playing the Succubus’ Den of Devices (names changed to avoid nausea.)

 

[Alzrius]

3e Fiend lord stats in a certain CR range that can be taken on by high level PCs. For 3.0 I think it was the only real discussion of fiend lords.

For 3.0 it was, though they got 3.5 upgrades in both of the Fiendish Codex supplements (and the demon lords got even more in the Dragon magazine "Demonomicon of Iggwilv" articles).

Also, the BoVD introduced the jerren (e.g. evil halflings) and vasharan (e.g. evil humans) races, so that all of the major PC races had an evil counterpart (e.g. the drow, duergar, and spriggans).