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

[Hussar]

This is ridiculous and I don't believe any mental health expert would suggest this as a coping mechanism. You simply can't remove everything from role playing games, novels, comics, video games, motion pictures, television shows, plays, and poems that might trigger someone. Expecting the rest of the world to revolve around an individual's pain is both unrealistic and not at all helpful to anyone. Do you know of any mental health experts who argue that we should avoid some subjects in fiction? Or do they provide their patients with useful ways to cope with their triggers?

There’s a slight difference between “removing everything” and not releasing a thirty year old setting with slavery just because some people happen to want it.

 

[AnotherGuy]

RPGs (and here I'm including video games and LARPS) are far more immersive than probably any other type of entertainment.

You watch a movie involving slavery, you are a passive participant. You play a game involving slavery, you are an active participant. People have pointed out that the first DS module involved the PCs being slaves. In other words, you were a slave.

Name one other type of entertainment that makes you the slave. Or the slave owner.

Abe from Oddworld
In Trial of Champions within the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks
Divinity: Original Sin 2 features a playable character, Sebille, who was a slave

 

[OldOwlbear]

No. Actually it 100% is the responsibility of everyone to help people in need and be a positive force to help them “cope”. Your need to be entertained is far, far less important than easing someone’s pain.

It’s called compassion for a reason.

As someone who survived discriminatory violence and whose family has had to rebuild for decades now as a result, I disagree with this sentiment whole heartedly.

I lean strongly to the left, support policies that will aid people recovering from recent or historical prejudice, but this approach to addressing those issues is terrible.

It assumes that everyone’s trauma is everyone’s responsibility- which is an impossible standard for faulty humans to maintain. It gives license to people to shut down others’ freedom of speech for the sake of their perspective on justice and healing - when even individual victims may not want that kind of approach!

Determining what is just entertainment and what is freedom of expression is way too murky of a line for anyone to be the judge of in this context. But if it’s every person’s responsibility to curtail their expression for the sake of what may be offensive to others, where is that line? It’s one thing for people to be expected to not use racism or other things to intentionally harm others, and I agree with that moral standard completely. But it’s whole different thing to suggest that people need to limit their freedom of expression just because it may offend someone when the expression itself is not intended to do harm. Where does that responsibility end? What if someone is offended by my religion and I pray in public? Plenty of people have been traumatized by religion. What if someone is reminded of past trauma that is more universal, like physical violence? Should we expect private individuals to stop to avoid these subjects? How do we explore touchy subjects if they are untouchable because it may be too difficult for some to be exposed to?

Please correct me if I’m misunderstanding your perspective. I apologize if I am.

 

[Tonguez]

So we’re back to whitewashing the issue?

The existence of the “kindly slave owner” does not really change anything.

I mean you’re actually saying that slave traders are ok because Joseph has a good ending.

No Im saying that there are historic cultures where Society is tribal and in those societies slave owning is a neutral fact of life, slave owners arent evil and calling an entire society evil is problematic in itself.
The tension is in using ancient cultures as inspiration v modern sensibilities, either Dark Sun allows for its Bronze age inspiration or fantasy continues its medieval vanilla whitewash

 

[MGibster]

RPGs (and here I'm including video games and LARPS) are far more immersive than probably any other type of entertainment.

This is an argument Pat Pulling made when claiming D&D was harmful to children. Do you have a cite from any credible mental health expert showing the harm D&D has done over the years?

Name one other type of entertainment that makes you the slave. Or the slave owner.

You still haven't named any form of entertainment that makes you the slave. When I play a wizard in D&D, I am most emphatically not the wizard. When my character kills a kobold I have not killed a kobold. When my wizard dies I have not died. Why? Because I am not my character. Like Pat Pulling, you're arguing that people who play RPGs can't tell the difference between fiction and reality. This is an argument popular in the 1980s that most of us laugh at now because it's so absurd.

 

[Hussar]

While I agree that WotC has moved into a position in the market that will result them making products that might no longer appeal to 'older' D&D fans (they already have from my perspective). And we should look at others to fill in the gaps.

Your premise is a bit faulty, because others insist that WotC MUST make a product that they know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, will make other people unhappy! In the same way TSR ignored the people making the D&D=devilworship, WotC is now listening to other parts of society...

There is a notable difference. This allusion to the Satanic Panic keeps making the rounds like it’s some sort of slam dunk argument.

Those promoting the satanic panic were not and never were going to be part of the hobby or the fandom. These were people, woefully misinformed, promoting a big pack of false information in order to force people who had nothing to do with them, to follow their beliefs.

In this case, it’s actual fans of the hobby, who support the hobby with both time and money, telling you that including slavery, one of the most evil bits of our shared history, the effects of which we are still dealing with today, is not something we want to see in our pretend elf game. We don’t want this product and we won’t buy it.

There really isn’t much of a comparison here. You are being told, quite honestly, that things like slavery make people in the hobby, who are every bit as important to the hobby as you, make us uncomfortable and feel unwelcome.

So, at the end of the day, which is more important to you? To me, it’s more important that people feel welcome in the hobby. I don’t need a thirty year old setting to get reprinted knowing that that reprint is going to make others in the hobby feel like they’re not welcome.

We’ve done that quite enough throughout the history of the hobby.

You want Dark Sun? It’s all right there in pdf format. Every bit of published material for your enjoyment. But I do t feel that it is appropriate for WotC to actively support that line knowing that it will make chunks of the fandom unhappy.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Out of interest do DS fans have a "Pandius" like Mystara fans have?

 

[humble minion]

And WotC already messed up with the Spelljammer reboot, even with all the bleaching of the setting, still things got past the bleachers and they had to apologize publicly for it. While many old skool Spelljammer fans just didn't bother picking up the product due to the bleaching...

Spelljammer had disappointing sales, but certainly not due to ‘bleaching’ (whatever THAT is…)

Spelljammer sold poorly because it was scanty in content, very expensive for the page count, the adventure was a railroad with a dubious ending, and WotC didn’t even bother putting meaningful spaceship combat rules in their space pirate setting.

Dark Sun is a bit of a different beast, fanbase-wise. When WotC was running polls about peoples’ favourite settings, Dark Sun was routinely at the top while Spelljammer was an afterthought. Also, while DS never sold in huge numbers back in its 2e iteration (pretty much like every TSR book at the time other than Drizzt novels, to be fair) it also had a well-regarded 4e release which I have no doubt sold many many more, and unlike Spelljammer had a really solid presence all through 3e at athas.org even though there were no official releases for that edition. This is a bit of a double-edged sword for WotC, of course. You have a more popular setting by almost any measure so there’s a bigger proportion of your customer base who are potentially keen, but that also means you have a bigger base of people who are more likely to be attached to the old lore. And the ‘old lore’ in this case is only a bit over a decade old, rather than three decades old like Spelljammer and the original DS material from back in the TSR days.

 

[Scribe]

In this case, it’s actual fans of the hobby, who support the hobby with both time and money, telling you that including slavery, one of the most evil bits of our shared history, the effects of which we are still dealing with today, is not something we want to see in our pretend elf game. We don’t want this product and we won’t buy it.

There really isn’t much of a comparison here. You are being told, quite honestly, that things like slavery make people in the hobby, who are every bit as important to the hobby as you, make us uncomfortable and feel unwelcome.

So, at the end of the day, which is more important to you? To me, it’s more important that people feel welcome in the hobby. I don’t need a thirty year old setting to get reprinted knowing that that reprint is going to make others in the hobby feel like they’re not welcome.

Is it the slavery or the institutionalization/wide spread/legitimized nature of the slavery that is the issue here?

DS, I get it, had it as a very central component to the setting.

Paizo has now removed it in any future product.

In prior product however, it still exists.

You are in the Abyss, they (Demons) have an actual slave market, where you can (for various quests) purchase, or free slaves, for again various quest lines. You can also, and in one path must, go in and clear it out, kill all the slave traders, free all the slaves.

Looking at the poll here (unscientific, biased population of likely older white dudes, etc etc) I would think that last scenario, in a clearly Evil place, supported by clearly Evil beings, for clearly Evil ends, which you can go in and do something about, is something the vast majority would be in favour of?

 

[AnotherGuy]

RPGs (and here I'm including video games and LARPS) are far more immersive than probably any other type of entertainment.

You watch a movie involving slavery, you are a passive participant.

I just wanted to add - music, movies and novels have generated a wider emotional range from me, and I suspect I'm not unique, than D&D ever has.