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Okay, and? The discussion is about TTRPGs broadly (as was the original post, which was made in TTRPG General), not just about D&D and Pathfinder and what the companies publishing those specific games should do in their worldbuilding. Nor does one have to play other games to read those gamebooks...

Again, the entire premise of this thread was that people shouldn't remove certain 'controversial' elements from their games, because doing so makes them less interesting. And, again, there are plenty of games that deal with controversial subjects head-on, and are set in cultures other than...

Side note: while I don't recall if this was mentioned in the Dragon article, Charles R. Saunders also wrote a swords and sorcery series, Imaro, which is a lot of fun. The characters are more or less archetypes but the setting is very rich, and, well, swords and sorcery.

Well, sorta. I do agree with you that they are trying to make a more broadly-acceptable game and to expand their market, including getting younger players. I don't think they are "seeking to avoid controversy at all costs" (a thing that is truly impossible in the TTRPG hobby anyway) - they've...

Beyond being snarky, I'm not sure what point you though you were making here. Big TTRPG publishers are putting out what you call 'disney-fied' games because they think that's what will sell. I presume they are competent enough to look at their own sales and marketing data to see what they...

"reasons" = sales. That used to be thought to be an appropriate yardstick for game content - if a company published Journey to the Lair of the Big-Breasted Witch Queens with cover art to match, there was clearly a market for that supplement, it was entirely appropriate for the company to target...

Some sensibiliities are more equal than others!

I'm old enough to remember when complaints about, say, RPG supplements with pin-up covers or rulebooks with gross stereotypical NPCs were met with derisive sneers that "this is what sells" and "they're just doing what the market demands" and "maybe if you don't like it go write your own game"...

"OMG! Censorship! Art!" "Hey, here are a bunch of games that deal with all of these things you're worried about losing." "Never heard of 'em; doesn't count. OMG! Censorship! Art!"

You know who really feels a twinge of fear on opening their social media? Small, indie game designers who are from marginalized groups, and who are producing games that deal with their issues openly. I already linked to a thread on this very board where people lost their entire minds over an...

So first we have a goofy crayon box analogy and now we have a ten year cutoff? Where is all this coming from? I really don’t get why anyone feels it necessary to say “leaving X topics out objectively makes your game worse” when they really mean “I want to include X topics in my game”.

What other crayons were being crowded out of the box to make room for that one?

Oh. So TTRPGs can't possibly have these 'controversial' subjects in them, but when it turns out lots of them do, that's purely because they are written by 'low profile' creators which makes them, uh, less susceptible to Twitter pile-ons and criticisms than bigger companies somehow? Maybe it's...

So can we agree that the problem isn't that the Character-Impugning Mob is frightening TTRPG publishers away from putting 'controversial' elements in games? There are a lot of these games out there.

So is "impugn their character" now the euphemistic way of saying "calling them racist/sexist"? I keep seeing this specific phrase pop up around these issues. Steal Away Jordan, Night Witches, Grey Ranks, Hot Guys Making Out, just off the top of my head, are games that include and in some cases...

It's funny; the indie game scene has been doing this forever, but because they do so from a perspective that many would dismiss as "woke" I guess that doesn't count.

The US is a big place and this varies a lot by region and by restaurant. For chain restaurants, it's pretty typical for them to have little symbols indicating whether an item is vegan, vegetarian, or gluten-free, and it's also pretty typical to have a disclaimer explaining that the kitchen uses...

Is there, or is it just that the label is a cultural signal about how we feel regarding the use of that label? I mean, let's conjugate: I thoughtfully include advance signposts on my games so that players can make informed decisions. You put content warnings on your games to give people a heads...

But see, when you do that you get lectured about including "trigger warnings".

On the contrary, there are indeed people who say this! But it's interesting to see when it's considered "okay" to include sexual assault as a topic in games. You don't, for example, see many RPGs set in classical Greece or Rome that feature sex between adult men and boys as part of the setting...