D&D General Dark Sun as a Hopepunk Setting

[seebs]

The Hays Code was an outright prohibition of topics being presented, at all.

I mean, sorta? But also we had long histories of "you can portray X, but only if you show explicitly that it's evil" or whatever, and... I just don't think that has historically worked out well as a rule to have in media.

I don't object to people saying "yeah we are in fact depicting this as evil and to be opposed", but I'm not sold on the idea that they are obligated to do that.

If you wanna write about it in a way that isn't "Handholdy" or whatever, be my guest. Unlike the Hays Code this isn't going to be imposed on other projects or works. It's just how I'd want to do it to ensure its specific level of 'problematic' is low enough for WotC to publish.

Now if you wanna argue that WotC's standards for their publications are too stringent that's definitely something you could argue. But please do it in a thread dedicated to discussing WotC's standards for publication.

This is the part I'd missed. I thought you were asserting this as an inherent moral imperative that was simply the only way these topics could ever be addressed in any setting without it being inherently wrong, not as a thing about what WotC would or wouldn't do. (I have no idea what they would or wouldn't publish. Their track record doesn't exactly make me think they think about these issues much.)

 

[seebs]

I'm sorry, but there are enough people trying to go 'but what about the good parts of slavery?' with their gaze flicking between me and a nearby cotton field already, and 'enough' starts at negative 8 billion.

Yeah, this is a very good point.

 

[Staffan]

Well, idk how big that area would be in real life, but we can use Kuwait as an example. It's small desert country, with longest border to border distances of 170 and 200 km, with 9 cities over 50k (4 over 100k) people. You can cram a lot of it in tight spaces when it's few cities and desert in between.

Real-world equivalent would be approximately the size of Germany or Colorado. Which certainly isn't nothing, but for other settings it'd be more like a sourcebook for a country or region, not "The World".

That said, it was expanded to about 8 times the size in the revised box (the original map was expanded to be at the center of a map about twice the size in each direction, and then another map of the same size was added to the north of that), and even the original box clearly stated that there were populated areas beyond it. There's a road heading off to the south of the OG map, and I believe Draj was said to trade with cities north of the map. But the Tyr Region is fairly regionally isolated, particularly to the east and west. To the east there's the Sea of Silt, and to the west there are the Ringing Mountains (which is described as tall enough that breathing can be a problem) and the Forest Ridge, and after that there are the Hinterlands with their bands of roving thri-kreen.

 

[Steampunkette]

We can't forget the Crimson Savannah!

... no matter how hard we try.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I think Dark Sun was very much influenced by Mad Max when it first came out. I really liked the recent movies of that franchise (Fury Road and Furiosa), even if they weren't exactly blockbusters.

I guess we need a big fight on a moving caravan pulled Inixes, against a bunch of raiders...

 

[Corinnguard]

Fantasy is a very broad genre and can mean different things to different people.

Exactly. And there is one form of fantasy that does deal with some of our real-life problems. Modern Fantasy aka Urban Fantasy.

 

[Umbran]

clearly you are not following US politics closely

Mod Note:
And clearly, you are forgetting the rules of the site.

Stop, please.

 

[Steampunkette]

Tiny fun note:

30 people snagged the Esper today. Happy about that.

 

[ColinChapman]

I suspect I'm the only one here who has talked to people whoose culture practiced cannibalism.

Not even.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not even.

Nice