D&D 5E (2014) Dark Sun, problematic content, and 5E…

[MGibster]

But including something like slavery in the game is like including genocide. That level of horror anyway. So, unless folks are also okay with depictions of individuals crushing the heads of babies against a tree, I'm thinking that any actual depiction of slavery should probably be off the table as well.

We can find genocide in Curse of Strahd and I don't recall many people complaining about it. We also have some hags in the human trafficking game cannibalizing children to produce a drug that induces euphoric dreams. What D&D players will or won't accept is hard to pin down.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Bad taste? Sorry but you can't imagine the "bad taste" I had to suffer from the "media", for example some cover from the satiric magazine "el Jueves" (like MAD or Charlie Hebbo

You miss the point. No one cares what YOU find bad taste. You aren’t the people WotC are trying to sell too - you aren’t even American. But I think it’s reasonable to suppose you wouldn’t have bought any of those things you thought were bad taste, no?

The people whose taste matters are American teens and twenties. Everyone else is commercially irrelevant to WotC.

 

[Umbran]

What D&D players will or won't accept is hard to pin down.

I expect WotC, with its current PR position, would be more concerned with the reaction on social media.

There's loads of folks who are more than willing to shout at you about how outright evil Hasbro/WotC are. As a company historically marketing to 12-year-olds, putting out a mature product in which slavery is a worldwide casual occurrence that is tolerated by virtually everyone, and not intended to be torn down by the players? That'd be a poor choice.

The first words on social media will be, "WotC condones slavery!" and we'll be off to the races.

The folks who would love Dark Sun are not sufficient recompense to offset that headache.

 

[MGibster]

I expect WotC, with its current PR position, would be more concerned with the reaction on social media.

I suspect you're correct. However I often question how representative the loudest voices on social media actually are. Even then, it's not a headache I imagine WotC wants to deal with. In truth, as far as I'm concerned, Dark Sun had its time in the sun. WotC is better off working on other settings.

 

[Perky the Dragon]

There's loads of folks who are more than willing to shout at you about how outright evil Hasbro/WotC are. As a company historically marketing to 12-year-olds, putting out a mature product in which slavery is a worldwide casual occurrence that is tolerated by virtually everyone, and not intended to be torn down by the players? That'd be a poor choice.

Where did this idea come from that apparently you can't do anything to slavery within the Dark Sun setting? Dark Sun 4e literally had a city state that overthrew it's sorcerer king and freed the slaves.

It's feels like there's a contingent of people who can't cope unless the product spells it out to them.

 

[Umbran]

Where did this idea come from that apparently you can't do anything to slavery within the Dark Sun setting?

I got that from Dark Sun fans who insisted that the setting must remain inviolate, that the point of the setting is struggling a world you cannot change.

Maybe you disagree. This is the problem for making later versions of things that were a hit once - the market for it is probably NOT particularly single-minded in what it wants.

 

[Umbran]

I suspect you're correct. However I often question how representative the loudest voices on social media actually are.

How representative they are isn't the issue. How impactful they are is the issue.

In truth, as far as I'm concerned, Dark Sun had its time in the sun. WotC is better off working on other settings.

That' a pretty fair position to take.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

You can say "the national market should the priority for the business" but an answer style "you aren't the kind of client I am searching" or "your opinion doesn't matter because you aren't from here" is an epic failure in the diplomacy check. The international market is very important or you will see your favorite IPs being forgotten and replaced with Asian franchises.

I hope we can agree the product should be ideologicaly neutral to be sold better for the highest number of clients. We should agree societies from different nations may be different criterias about what can be tolerated, or even within a same country different communities could have got their own criteria. Some times when you want to atract certain type of client or audience you could be causing the rejection of most. There are some example in the entertaiment industry about this.

If I ask the reasons and you can't give a clear answer then it is your fault, your own mistake.

Is there any trouble in the crunch section: (subclasses, PC species, monsters, magic item, spells, feats...)? The fluff/lore section only needs some pages describing the region of Athasian Tablelands, the city-states and sorcerer-kings, and here we can omit all that possible controversial content. The 4th DS didn't touch the metaplot and nobody complained.

Lots of homemade settings are "spiritual succesors" of favorite settings, some times mixing different franchises. Why not to offer a list of names of places and characters for your homemade setting?

If I don't want to play the original DS is because I want to add in my setting other PC species (for example dromites and elans) and classes (like the ardent or the totemist shaman), or my own ideas, for example an evil empire where giths are ruled by infernal dragons, or cultist of Tharizdum using "blighter" magic, the divine version of defiler magic. Of course maybe I would like to add an ersatz or expy version of my favorite characters from the novels. Some players would rather to play a mash-up version of a known-setting to not have to learn a lot of new names.

 

[king of the ceaders]

What judgement? That slavery is one of the most horrific things in history? I don't think that's too much of a stretch. That slavery is equivalent to things like genocide in its level of horror? Again, I don't think that's a terribly unfair judgement.

But, ok, fair enough. How would you present it? How would you present slavery in Dark Sun in such a way that it's handled with sensitivity and gravity in our heroic fantasy game? What art would you use? Please, specifically detail how you would describe slavery and it's use in the game.

Everyone wants to wave this magic wand and say, "oh, it's not really problematic". It's easy. We'll just magically get WotC to thread that needle with ease and grace and we'll get that Dark Sun setting we all want.

So, let's see it. Let's see someone here step up to the plate and give a decent example of how you present slavery in D&D that would be acceptable to the publisher.

I'll wait.

The judgement from equating wanting a DS setting for 5e to being ok with genocide and crushing skulls.

As for giving an example, those capable of meeting your requirements are far more likely to be playing a homebrew version than debating it here. Not everyone that drives a car knows how they work, let alone can build one in their driveway if that were a requirement for owning and driving a car there would be very few cars on the road.

As has been stated here by many there are things just as bad as DS already in D&D 5e.

 

[tetrasodium]

I expect WotC, with its current PR position, would be more concerned with the reaction on social media.

That one should be easy, we even have a recent example from 2 years ago. "I don't condone slavery personally. However, it's true that I wrote Rudeus as someone who is not averse to slavery. Also, the original story is written with a kind of mild setting where it is accepted that, "Slavery is a normal thing in this world. It is what it is.”.... season 3 is expected next year

I got that from Dark Sun fans who insisted that the setting must remain inviolate, that the point of the setting is struggling a world you cannot change.

Maybe you disagree. This is the problem for making later versions of things that were a hit once - the market for it is probably NOT particularly single-minded in what it wants.

That's not quite what was said and it misses the mark enough to encourage further outrage over something never said. What was said is essentially the fact that darksun is a setting where the easy solutions of using violence time travel or whatever to solve big problems leads to bigger problems such as borys coming looking for power to maintain the seal or the seal itself breaking to allow rajaat to escape. That came up because there were suggestions leaning on text that doesn't exist in the darksun books as justification for simply removing that tonal safeguard. Phoenix Arizona and las Vegas Nevada are pretty nice places despite being in the desert, athas is not like those and it has a lot of setting elements that add up to ensure that it takes more than a high level party to change that.