D&D 5E Dark Sun, problematic content, and 5E…

[Bagpuss]

Significant? That's not much better than 'entire'. I think you might want to back that statement up with some facts.

Actually they are very different, the vast majority of the player base could be for something, but you can have a significant minority against something, they are still a minority so the meaning is far from "entire".

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Thanks for the conversation.

Ditto.

 

[Irlo]

I mean, maybe. There seems to have been a culture problem at Wizards in regards to some of these issues where certain people weren't even having their stuff read over by sensitivity writers (though thankfully that is no longer the case). I really wish there was a way of establishing a more adult brand of D&D adventure/setting, but I just don't know how Wizards would actually do that. They'd probably be better off trying to subcontract out instead.

Many, many years ago, Dungeon Magazine published a sealed "mature-content" adventure. I don't think it worked out for them, since the experiment wasn't repeated.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Actually they are very different, the vast majority of the player base could be for something, but you can have a significant minority against something, they are still a minority so the meaning is far from "entire".

Can't argue with that. I didn't start the topic of 'how many' in this conversation, but I sure regret pulling the thread on that sweater...

 

[Cergorach]

That is a cool idea that could work.

In the past White Wolf had a couple of imprints, one was:

Black Dog, also called Black Dog Game Factory was an imprint of White Wolf that handled roleplaying games and supplements with mature and adult themes. This definition applies to not only content such as excessive violence or sexual themes, but to games with ideas that need a mature viewpoint to gain any benefit or appreciation.

The title that reminds me the most of this brand was: HoL (Human occupied Landfill), but there are more notorious books under that imprint. But White Wolf was already pretty niche, dark and horrific, especially when their most popular IP was Vampire: The Masquarade. Still they found it necessary to create a separate imprint for their mature/adult themes. I suspect that even the names White Wolf and Black Dog would be big no-no's these days. And the amount of trouble such adult themes would bring, would not be worth it to WotC (at this time). Getting trusted 3rd party publisher to do DS (and the like) I also do not see happening, as that feels like as them being endorsed by WotC and that would invite too much trouble again. Just opening up all the D&D settings might be disconnected enough from WotC to fly under the radar amidst tens of thousands of other digital products...

Source:

Black Dog

For other meanings of the term Black Dog, see Black Dog (disambiguation). Black Dog, also called Black Dog Game Factory was an imprint of White Wolf that handled roleplaying games and supplements with mature and adult themes. This definition applies to not only content such as excessive violence...

whitewolf.fandom.com

 

[Cergorach]

Many, many years ago, Dungeon Magazine published a sealed "mature-content" adventure. I don't think it worked out for them, since the experiment wasn't repeated.

That was Dungeon #95, the first Dungeon under Paizo publication at the time (95-150), marked on the front page as "Sex, drugs & demon lords". It was a sealed adventure that tied in with the Book of Vile Darkness release, pretty much the only 'mature' D&D book at that time... I suspect that that kind of 'mature' content would be an absolute no-go for WotC at this point. WotC is still a US company, with a US 'culture', so the sex part of that 'mature' content would be an absolute NO! Blood, violence, killing is fine for our youth, but sex, absolutely not!

 

[MGibster]

But White Wolf was already pretty niche, dark and horrific, especially when their most popular IP was Vampire: The Masquarade. Still they found it necessary to create a separate imprint for their mature/adult themes. I suspect that even the names White Wolf and Black Dog would be big no-no's these days.

Niche is a pretty strange way to describe a game that went on to be adapted to a live action network television series. I don't know if you were around in the early 90s, but White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade really had an impact on gaming and brought in a lot of new people who sure as heck weren't going to be playing D&D. Vampire was never a household name like D&D, but it was one of the few RPGs that non-gamers might have heard of. Hell, it appeared on an episode of Real Stories of the Highway Patrol!

 

[Mark Hope]

In the past White Wolf had a couple of imprints, one was:


The title that reminds me the most of this brand was: HoL (Human occupied Landfill), but there are more notorious books under that imprint. But White Wolf was already pretty niche, dark and horrific, especially when their most popular IP was Vampire: The Masquarade. Still they found it necessary to create a separate imprint for their mature/adult themes. I suspect that even the names White Wolf and Black Dog would be big no-no's these days. And the amount of trouble such adult themes would bring, would not be worth it to WotC (at this time). Getting trusted 3rd party publisher to do DS (and the like) I also do not see happening, as that feels like as them being endorsed by WotC and that would invite too much trouble again. Just opening up all the D&D settings might be disconnected enough from WotC to fly under the radar amidst tens of thousands of other digital products...

Source:

Black Dog

For other meanings of the term Black Dog, see Black Dog (disambiguation). Black Dog, also called Black Dog Game Factory was an imprint of White Wolf that handled roleplaying games and supplements with mature and adult themes. This definition applies to not only content such as excessive violence...

whitewolf.fandom.com

The standout Black Dog supplement for me was Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah. It was nothing less than a supplement for Wraith: the Oblivion that tacked the Holocaust. There have been differing responses to that piece of work but over time the consensus is that the writers and designers took an incredibly fraught topic and managed to handle it well. I don't think you can get more "problematic" than this. And yet the end result was remarkable and our hobby and culture are the richer for it.

 

[Cergorach]

Niche is a pretty strange way to describe a game that went on to be adapted to a live action network television series. I don't know if you were around in the early 90s, but White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade really had an impact on gaming and brought in a lot of new people who sure as heck weren't going to be playing D&D. Vampire was never a household name like D&D, but it was one of the few RPGs that non-gamers might have heard of. Hell, it appeared on an episode of Real Stories of the Highway Patrol!

I was around in gaming since 1987-1988, so yeah I know of the the "Kindred: The Embraced" (1996). Honestly it was horrible! It was 8 episodes, they only showed 7 and it was cancelled. As I was playing Vampire: The Masquarade at the time, I found it completely lacking the atmosphere of VtM, some reviewer even described it as a "cross between The Godfather and Melrose Place". It utterly failed. So yeah, I stand by WW serving a niche. VtM is an iconic RPG of the era, absolutely! It also drew in a new group of people, it also did a whole lot for LARP.

Please keep in mind that there was a D&D cartoon from 1983-1985, that had it's own following and toys. But I wouldn't exactly call that representative of D&D and in 1983-1985 I would call D&D niche. And it's cartoon did far better then the Vampire TV series. There have been a couple of Vampire TV series that far better match the atmosphere in the RPG then the official TV series ever did.

Most people actually watching "Kindred: The Embraced" wouldn't even know of the RPG or understand what a pnp RPG even is. Now if WW was able to grow those properties like WotC did D&D, then we might have a whole different discussion. But they didn't. The last time Vampire showed up in any charts was at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, sales spiked due to Vampire 5th edition. The current constants in the charts (for years) are D&D and Pathfinder.

I call Vampire niche in it's time, but I also called Dark Sun a niche (DS) in a niche (D&D) when it was first released.

 

[Maxperson]

We’re back to this? There’s nothing stopping that from happening now. Having it in an official setting won’t change that. And it’s weird to want to prevent people from having a choice because they might use that choice in a way you don’t like.

Why not bring it up? We do exactly the same by reducing the pain of murder, violence, war, famine, colonization, on and on and on…all for plot hooks.

How many movies and tv shows have actors roleplaying slavers and slaves? How many movies and tv shows have actors roleplaying abusers and the abused? How many movies and tv shows have actors roleplaying torturers and the tortured? A whole hell of a lot of them.

We don't go around demanding that they stop making these movies and tv shows. Hollywood doesn't have problems remaking old movies that have these things in them. Why is that? It's because those movies and tv shows have actors roleplaying the other side as well. They have the heroes trying to free the slaves. They have the heroes trying to bring the abusers and torturers to justice. And because they show that those things are awful and should be opposed, we are okay with it.

RPGs are no different. It's okay to remake a setting with slavery as a centerpiece. It's okay for people to roleplay the slavers and/or enslaved. Why? For the same reason it's okay for them to be depicted in movies and tv shows. It's because those things will be opposed and we know that they are awful things. If the players are the ones roleplaying the heroes, the DM will be the one roleplaying the slavers and other bad guys and the opposition will be there. If the players decide that they want to be the bad guys and roleplay the slavers, then the DM will roleplay heroes trying to stop them, and slave revolts against the evil PC overlords. The opposition will be there as well.

There will be some small number of games where everyone is just bad and the conflict is bad guys vs. bad guys, but if everyone in the group is on board with that sort of game, it's still okay to do. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but we don't have to play that way if we don't want to. It's also something that isn't going to be stopped by keeping Dark Sun on the back burner or encouraged by the release of Dark Sun. If @overgeeked's group wants to play a game like this and they aren't bringing it out into real life, we don't have the right to say that they can't or shouldn't play that way. They are literally hurting no one by doing so.

Edit: corrected a typo