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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8808552" data-attributes="member: 6915329">But here's the other problem. A lot of the changes that you quite possibly object to were also made because of problematic content.Let's go with two simple domains: Dementlieu and Valachan. Dementlieu was ruled by a man who was not only a serial mind-rapist, but considering his powers and his obsession with women, was almost certainly a literal rapist as well (he way want romance, but he has total mind-control powers and is a noble with lots of female servants). Valachan was home to the Core's only dark-skinned Darklord, who was also a literal animal who was likewise obsessed with women and was a rapist as well (and yet, he was well-loved by the populace, thanks to vampiric charm). While both of these darklords were evil to everyone, they were especially evil to women. They were both domains where women, not men, were stripped of their free will and made into playthings for a man.There is basically no way to remove this problematic behavior without either changing the entire story or making it problematic in a different way (TV Tropes has a page called "depraved bisexual," for instance, so merely making them equal-opportunity rapists merely falls into a different stereotype). What do you think is the solution here that would keep these darklords and their stories intact while removing all of the problematic elements and also not making their stories weak or boring? Seriously, I want to know. To me, the only way to do it is to start from the ground up. Saidra's backstory wasn't the best, perhaps, but it's a heap better than most of the pre-5e backstories for female darklords, which were inevitably either "hates all men" or "wants a man."Or go with a third domain, Lamordia. Go reread Adam's backstory again. He canonically did nothing actually evil. He was convinced Eva loved him and wanted to run away with her. He went into her bedroom. She woke up, freaked out--reasonably enough, here's this flesh golem looming over her while she slept--and accidentally ran off the balcony. While he was trying to save her, Elise came in and misunderstood what was going on and stabbed him. He freaked out and lashed out, accidentally injuring Elise badly in the process. And he was so overwrought by his failure to save Eva and his lashing out at Elise he tried to commit suicide. This is why he was made a darklord. Since then, he spends the vast majority of his time alone and only is "evil" at people who actively try to disturb him.Where's the evil here? Mistaking friendship for romance? Having an automatic reaction to being stabbed? Trying to commit suicide? No. Adam was a poor attempt to create a Frankenstein's monster darklord, and by doing so, they didn't even properly capture the idea that the doctor is the true monster. Plus, you know, it's another setting where the women were the playthings of the men--Mordenheim keeps Elise alive by replacing her with mechanical parts, despite her begging him to let her die. Unlike with Dementlieu and Valachan, the main premise of the domain wasn't unsalvageable. It just needed tweaking by making the actual bad guy into the darklord. Doing a gender flip doesn't change the story, and neither does making Viktra a lesbian.</blockquote>

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