GMs altering established campaign setting elements to suit players?

[Zappo]

I am willing to change whatever it needs to suit the players. That said, I've never had players that had troubles with sex/racism/rape/human sacrifice in game, and I would be rather surprised if someone brought it up. I don't like the current fashion of political correctness at all, and I wouldn't take away elements which most of the group enjoys just for the sake of one player.

 

[robberbaron]

If the players really had a problem with something in My World(tm) I would change it - much easier in the long run - UNLESS it was an integral part of the storyline. In that case the players could change it themselves.

Then again, My World(tm) has been going for 16 years and I haven't had to change anything, yet. I guess my players are capable of accepting my ideas without bitching about them.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

In my recent Conan game one of the players decided not to show up for that campaign, though she had vastly enjoyed all other campaigns I ran. It was simply a change of stride; Racism, sexism and brutality are common in that world - my subsequent descriptions of gore (As reccomended by the Conan book, I might add) were the big turn-off. All the others (females included) enjoyed the game immensely.

I'm not going to change the Conan setting to a nice fantasy setting with different rules.. you lose the whole point of doing something different to begin with.

And previously a poster mentioned Historical games - I'm certainly not going to change the feel of history, though it's events may diverge. Thats not the point of playing such games.

However, there is something to be said about the fun. Such games aren't for everyone. I suppose some groups are simply lucky to have historically-interested players. Nothing wrong with staple fantasy; excellent for having fun. But I'm not going to set a game in Hyboria with the intention to disney it. Why bother with Hyboria at all? It's just names and vast tracts of land without the feel, the underlying tensions of the place.

 

[Buttercup]

I'd be willing to consider altering just about any element of any campaign in the name of fun.

As DM I'm unlikely to run anything that makes me personally uncomfortable, naturally.

 

[Dr Simon]

sexism in Nehwon,

That would be where men are constantly out-witted by women, right?

 

[Gez]

From the title I thought you meant stuff like "my character is an ◄insert race/class/culture/whatever that doesn't exist in the setting► from ◄insert region that isn't detailed in the setting►, and I wrote a super-cool background for him" and then altering the setting to fit the player's concept in the world.

That I sometimes do. It's fun to elaborate the game world with the players, so that everyone shares the fun of worldbuilding.

But I never faced the situation where one of my players told me "this part of the setting hurts my feelings, please remove it or I call the the WLF/PETA/Black Panthers/etc" -- and there are all forms of bigotry existing in the setting, from the High Elves' oppressive racism to the Chandres' extreme mysogyny.

I think my players are mature enough to understand that it's not because ogre eat people IMC that I personally condone eating people or share the ogres' culinary preferences.

 

[WayneLigon]

I've found myself much more willing to change rules than to change established elements of my gameworld mid-campaign, although I was happy to de-emphasise elements I found it impossible to retcon it, to say "Ok, X doesn't exist". Many 'corporate' fictional universes like Star Trek or Marvel Universe seem happy to retcon though - is it an 'auteur' thing?

Well, neither Paramount nor either of the major comics companies are paragons of courage; both will do anything in their power to preserve their bottom line, even if it means dumping continuity or skirting around certain issues. You have no such concern.

I make certain assumptions in the following: I assume that your players are all friends, and friends outside of the game. If you're running pick-up games at the FLGS, then most of this probably won't apply.

After playing with them for some time, I have a fair idea of what my players will and will not put up with. Most of them can seperate their character from themselves, but at the same time I recognize that there are some things that you just don't put up with even in the face of historical accuracy. I guess it has to do more with tone and emphasis. If I know a player has reason to dislike dislike a particular thing, only rarely will that thing come up and then it's unlikely to be the focus of the session.

Usually I simply assume the PC's are going to be in exceptional circumstances and be (or soon be) outside of society's norm anyway so most of the rules aren't going to apply to them.

I know that women did not have the same opportunities in the 19th century that they do now, but there were also exceptions as well; the PC's are usually exceptional people anyway. If I was running Call of Cthulhu: 1850 and someone wanted a more independent female character there were ways of having that occur. (Mrs Potts was the talk of the London Scene; though Mr. Potts was long dead, she had her own money passed down from her grandfather and so was beholden to none. She spoke her mind and did as she wished and there was none to gainsay her. -- Mrs. Potts' circumstances are unusual, and she has both the wealth and charm to carry off what would be unforgivable social gaffs in anyone else. She can talk to servants as if they were equals, have a young man room in her house with no censure, etc, etc, and most people will simply say 'Oh, that's just Mrs. Potts. Isn't she the live one?')

In other circumstances:

I'd assume you'd know if there was going to be a problem with a particular part of a setting within your group; ie, 'everyone knows Bob won't play in a setting that has oozes in it'. If that was the case, I'd think long and hard about the position of oozes within the setting. If I really wanted to run the setting, I'd talk to Bob beforehand to make sure he's cool with it and discuss how I'd be handling it. Usually you can find some middle ground. If it was a choice between running the setting as is or losing Bob, I'd probably choose not to run the setting.

If you find out something like this after things have been going for some time, though, it would be a more difficult choice. If after a couple years of no complaining, Bob suddenly announces he's disgusted with your portrayal of oozes and either they go or he does.. I'm uncertain what I would do. I certainly would not want to lose Bob but... I've done all this work, everyone else is loving it, and he's kept silent for two years? Hmm. I'd assume first off that it really wasn't the oozes, that there was something else going on in Bob's life that's set him off. I'd talk with him and if that wasn't it, I'd probably suggest that Bob might enjoy a break from the game for a time. (Usually that won't work with my own games; we tend to go for a year or two on a campaign or setting and it's pretty harsh to say to someone 'well, see you in a couple years, then?' It would be more a case of 'Well, I hope you find gaming success elsewhere, Bob, and I'm sorry things didn't work out'.)

 

[S'mon]

That would be where men are constantly out-witted by women, right?

Where the women use their feminine wiles (ie sex) to outwit the men, yup.

 

[John Morrow]

BTW - on another board discussion the female strength limits, I found examples thanks to the Olympics that 18/76 should be the current female strength limit if someone still insist on using them and 18/00 is still too high for max human male strength as 2004. ~18/95 is about right for the current human max.

In D&D 3.5 terms (and in some suggested conversions from AD&D exceptional strength to D&D 3E), the male maximum (based on clean and jerk overhead lift records compared to the Heavy Load top end) is in the 23 (263.5kg) range while the female maximum is around 20 (183.5kg) (just barely over, actually). In D&D 3.5 terms, men should be from 2 to 4 points stronger than women at the average and maximum (based not only on olympic records but military studies on strength), which is fairly substantial in game terms. Strength is a function of size, body fat percentages, hormones, and a few other issues that favor men with respect to strength to a significant degree.

The key argument against strength limits or adjustments for female characters isn't really realism but fun and fairness, which is a big element in this thread. A sound realism argument can be made for strength limits or adjustments but there are quite legitimate reasons why people, both male and female, don't think they are fun. In a game where mechanics (and combat mechanics in particular) can define how powerful and effective a character is, a sex-based penalty on strength, for example, becames a sex-based penalty on combat effectiveness and power. That understandably bothers many people who don't want their choice of character sex to become an opportunity for min-maxing.

Given the large numbers of women warriors in genre fiction, such limits also really aren't necessarily from a genre perspective. It's possible in D&D 3.5, however, that moving any limited points or adjusted points from STR to DEX (e.g., -2 STR/+2 DEX) and the use of the Weapon Finesse feat could do a decent job of emulating many of the women warriors in the fantasy genre if someone really had to have strength adjustments in their game for "realism" purposes. Any penalty like that should be offset for balance just as penalties for being a certain race are, something many early role-playing games written by males, for males, didn't bother to do.

Original AD&D didn't really offer suitable compensation for the limits so it was simply a disadvantage to be female and it's not difficult to understand why that's seen as sexist. In many ways, the poor way that AD&D and other early RPGs handled such attribute differences has pretty much associated the whole idea of sex differentiated attributes as sexism. It wasn't unusual to in many early gaming magazines to find articles (often written by women) praising Traveller for not doing penalizing female characters.

Of course a simple but realistic approach is to just change the way character height and weight is calculated and not worry about sex-based modifiers at all. Strength is largely a function of muscle mass and corresponds reasonably well to lean weight. This is why they put boxers and wrestlers into weight classes. The idea is to create a formula that converts STR into a weight for each race and then based on build (e.g., lean, average, heavy) convert the weight into a height. That way, you could have your 20+ Strength woman and she'd simply be unusually (by real world standards) but realistically large.

The size difference reflected in the D&D height and weight charts (Human males start at 4' 10" and 120lbs. while Human females start at 4' 5" and 85lbs.) reflect a big part of why there are strength differences between men and women in the real world -- men are bigger and bigger people can be stronger. Eliminate that dimorphism in your fantasy setting and you've eliminated much of the cause of strength differences in the real world. I've seen Lucy Lawless (aka Xena) in real life and there really isn't anything wrong with unusually tall women warriors.

Of course there are also plenty of reasons why one could argue that it's absurd to even worry about realism when it comes to a game like D&D. That's why I agree that fun is the bottom line with issues like this.

 

[John Morrow]

I am willing to change whatever it needs to suit the players. That said, I've never had players that had troubles with sex/racism/rape/human sacrifice in game, and I would be rather surprised if someone brought it up. I don't like the current fashion of political correctness at all, and I wouldn't take away elements which most of the group enjoys just for the sake of one player.

Sometimes it isn't political correctness. There is a sizable subset of players who have had to deal with sexism, racism, and rape in the real world in a way that makes the whole topic too real for them for inclusion in a recreational activity. It's easy to deal with these issues being reduced to plot device status in a story or game if you have some emotional distance from it but not always that easy when the emotional distance isn't there. Some players are certainly just being politically correct when they complain but others may have good reason for being sensitive about certain issues, even if they don't want to talk about it.