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

[LuisCarlos17f]

My point of view may be different because I am Spanish and my History is different. For example we are very used to a "romantic" image about the pirates but for a lot of Spaniards they were monsters who attacked our coast populations to catch slaves, and I don't talk only about England but also the Otoman empire. You may be used to listen al-Andalus, when Spain was ruled my Musim invaders like a golden age but a little group of people know about the horrible actions of the warlord Almanzor and the "aceifas", the raids to catch slaves.

I have got an ancestor who was in the 1898 USA-Spanis war, and my grandparents suffered the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. Here we have got our own historical scars about the past. When Spanish dictator Franco died in 1975 and the democracy arrived to Spain the choice by the most of Spaniards was to "turn the page", to forget the pain from the past and to focuse into a future with more freedom.

You can say "my ancestors suffered a great injustice" and I can understand you but don't be blocked by the resentment. My own acenstors also suffered theirs. Should I feel resentment because I suffered bulling when I was a child, or mobbing in my last years because my toxic job partner?

I can understand some people may feel unconfortable when we chat about certain threats because these make us to remember painful moments from the past, and we shouldn't trivialize suffering by people of flesh and blood from certain past times. The nazis were true monsters, but then aren't we go to tell stories where pulp heroes can kick-ass nazis?

There is a new season of the 90s cartoon X-Men that tells about supremacism and intolerance, and these are very mature themes, but it is a show for children. Warhammer 40.000 is a very dark franchise, but there are W40K novels for children. Isn't there any way to tell in a softer way? We don't need to show all the details.

Other point is if the region of Tyr could be visited by PCs from other world in a multi-global adventure style Vecna: Eve of Ruin but then the cosmology of the Athaspace should be retconected or altered. Or maybe to travel to Athas would be relatively possible but the way is "blocked" by the faction from "the city of spires" (Black Spine module).

 

[bedir than]

This is excellent support for my, "stop hoping for 1st party content for Hasbro-owned D&D settings and just do your own thing" stance.

you also don't need Dark Sun as you already have Dark Sun.

A new book in an old setting is meant for new people in an old game, not old people in a game they've played for decades

 

[Micah Sweet]

you also don't need Dark Sun as you already have Dark Sun.

A new book in an old setting is meant for new people in an old game, not old people in a game they've played for decades

A new book in an old setting is meant for fans of that setting. Ask WotC if I'm wrong about that, and see what they say.

Let me ask you this: they make new stuff for Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel & DC, etc. Are those meant new people in an old franchise, or for fans of that franchise?

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe.

Obviously the difference is between most post-apocalyptic media and a D&D supplement is agency. In a film or book or whatever, the creator can ensure that the main characters stay on the right side of the slavery moral line. In D&D, they can't.

To the ones who we are talking about, the ones who are interested in Dark Sun because it's post-apocalyptic and they can fight slavery and tyrants, they will stay on the right side of the moral line. What other tables do doesn't matter.

I've said it before, but the second-most-obvious Dark Sun slavery plot (other than 'the PCs have been captured by slavers!') is 'the PCs have to rescue a loved one or other plot-important person who has been captured by slavers'. One of the very obvious solutions to this RPing scenario is to simply plunder a dungeon somewhere and use the proceeds to buy the individual concerned out of slavery.

Why is that more obvious than the group trying to free all the slaves of one of the city states and kill the dragon that enslaved them?

We're talking about folks opposed to slavery the institution, not a PC who had is friend taken by a templar. That could also be part of the game, but it would be a minor part of the greater whole.

No WotC product, I can guarantee, will EVER list how much it costs to buy a slave. Special circumstances or not. Just the same way as giving something a stat block means people will try to kill it, as soon as you put a price on something it becomes treasure, and some PCs will try to sell it. WotC will not do ANYTHING to even vaguely support PCs setting themselves up as slave traders, and no, sticking a 'don't do this, slavery is bad mmkay?' disclaimer in a sidebar will not change that.

I don't remember slave prices being in 2e Dark Sun. It was bad, then, too. Hell, the overthrow and freeing of Tyr was one of the things 2e Dark Sun brought into the light for the setting.

This doesn't mean that you can't do Dark Sun, of course. WotC dealt with the problematic parts of Dragonlance (gully dwarves, draconians creepily lusting for human women, the morality of the Cataclysm) by writing the setting as an adventure, and then arranging the adventure in a way that they could just flat-out not talk about the old awkward bits of the lore because the adventure did not relate to those facets of the setting. Similarly, the xenocidal Inhuman Wars, and the faux-Chinese Shou were just quietly ignored in 5e Spelljammer rather than any attempt being made to modernise or update them. A similar solution could be possible in Dark Sun. Have the bad guy a rogue defiler or an ancient kaisharga or Dregoth or an evil psionicist, a crazed elemental spirit, or psurlon coven or something, set the adventure in a small free village somewhere rather than one of the big cities, or else do a minor retcon to set the thing in someplace like Urik and make all slaves the property of Hamanu whose Law protects and covets them because they're his property. There's ways you could do it. It'd require a big divergence from the old lore, but with Ravenloft and Dragonlance WotC has certainly proven entirely willing to do that.

That would work, but I don't think that you need to do that. Just set up slavery as something that is happening all around, but still have it be bad. There are all kinds of media(not just post-apocalyptic) where the evil has rules for ages, but a group of heroes bands together to overthrow it and free everyone.

Having said all that ... I think WotCs current opinions on Dark Sun are probably heavily influenced by the youtube video series that came out a few years back now and was discussed heavily on here, with African-Americans talking about D&D lore from an African-American point of view. The thrust of those (if i'm remembering and paraphrasing correctly) was that slavery as a subject shouldn't be addressed at all in game because it cannot be addressed wiith the maturity and complexity it deserved. Now, I'm neither American, African, NOR African-American, so I don't know how widely those opinions are agreed with among that community, but at the end of the day WotC is an American company with the majority of its customer base in America. Even though the historical inspirations for Dark Sun's slavery model/system are clearly more based on ancient civilisations rather than the Antebellum USA, they'll likely be cautious of stepping incorrectly on the matter, and this is a subject that provides almost unlimited scope for stepping one SOMEONE's sensitive points.

As for the other stuff - as I said before, I'm not American. I'm aware that climate change is a politically heated topic (everywhere, but particularly over there), but if any media, movie, book, etc has ever found itself cancelled or in serious hot water because it includes climate change themes, I'm not aware of it. Is this a thing that actually happens, in real life? Are there any actual examples? Because it honestly appears, from the outside, that concerns over how these themes would be received in a modern DS product seem to be cowering from entirely hypothetical pushback. And expecially given WotCs target audience for D&D skews quite young, which is a demographic more likely to take climate change seriously as an issue.

I'm going to stay out of these political/highly charged topics.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

In a historical book or textbook no. In an official publication of an RPG yes.

The latter is a game and one that affords the opportunity for players to play explicitly evil characters. You can present canabalism, eugenics and slavery and the Sorcerer Kings as explicitly evil, yet players in D&D can play "on that side".

Further it is not just those objectively morally rehensible topics that are problems with dark sun, it is also the underlying messages on religion (aetheism causes society to fall) and the environment (people in power ruin the planet) that are a problem as well for a company trying to appeal to a large audience. Playing to opposite sides of the spectrum on these themes virtually assures you are going to piss off a lot of people with what will be interpreted as thinly veiled support for conservative and liberal extremist ideals respectively.

Then there is the sexism, both in the plot lines and the art. Playing a 5E Darksun reboot recently I commented that my PC was apparently the only woman on Athas that is not a stripper in her off time.

No if you eliminate all these things - slavery, eugenics, canabalism, apparant links to modern day political dogma and sexist plot and art ..... is what you are left with still Darksun? Probably not.

Even if cannibalism,.murder and slavery aren't written about, there's nothing stopping a PC from engaging in them. I've played more than one adventure with characters who just said "hey let's eat these goblins instead of buying rations" .

 

[kayakingpoodle]

you also don't need Dark Sun as you already have Dark Sun.

A new book in an old setting is meant for new people in an old game, not old people in a game they've played for decades

Lol, nostalgia players are a huge market, many don't want to chase down and pay for out of print books that need adapting to a new rule set. They will jump on a new book of an old setting adapted for the new rule set they and their current groups are using.

It is their excitement that drags many of the new players into the old setting. The issue is how well the book is done, not which demographic will buy it they all will buy a well done setting book plenty will buy a poorly done setting book see Spelljammer.

 

[The Firebird]

I've said it before, but the second-most-obvious Dark Sun slavery plot (other than 'the PCs have been captured by slavers!') is 'the PCs have to rescue a loved one or other plot-important person who has been captured by slavers'. One of the very obvious solutions to this RPing scenario is to simply plunder a dungeon somewhere and use the proceeds to buy the individual concerned out of slavery.

No WotC product, I can guarantee, will EVER list how much it costs to buy a slave. Special circumstances or not. Just the same way as giving something a stat block means people will try to kill it, as soon as you put a price on something it becomes treasure, and some PCs will try to sell it. WotC will not do ANYTHING to even vaguely support PCs setting themselves up as slave traders, and no, sticking a 'don't do this, slavery is bad mmkay?' disclaimer in a sidebar will not change that.

But that makes slavery stories hard to tell, and slavery-centric settings hard to write.

I think this is a very good point.

I'll wager my new racing pod against, say... the boy and his mother.

 

[bedir than]

Lol, nostalgia players are a huge market,

A claim that the 20% of the market that played D&D before 5e is more important than the tens of millions who picked it up in the past decade doesn't make sense

 

[bedir than]

Let me ask you this: they make new stuff for Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel & DC, etc. Are those meant new people in an old franchise, or for fans of that franchise?

Are you talking about the game, or are you talking about movies?
Because I think the mode of the story matters.

Secondly I would suggest that the dramatic success of Marvel in the modern era is because it abandoned its hardline nostalgia and created new stories within those tales. Star Wars biggest successes have been with shows that abandoned their former loyalists.

D.C.'s worst movies are from those who tried to be "loyal to the material."

Modernization in genre is eternal. Those franchises that do it best are the ones dominating. Those adhering to static, online addicts' demands are the ones that fail

 

[kayakingpoodle]

A claim that the 20% of the market that played D&D before 5e is more important than the tens of millions who picked it up in the past decade doesn't make sense

I didn't say they are more important, you said they weren't important at all.
Where are your numbers coming from?