Lanefan
Victoria Rules
"We", as in all of us collectively and separately, can still answer this.Oh, maybe change your question form "we" to "you" then?
My answer: play it as it lay, warts and all.
"We", as in all of us collectively and separately, can still answer this.Oh, maybe change your question form "we" to "you" then?
So my first answer was going to be "Depends on the group", but given this clarification, I would run it with all the warts included. I know that's not for everyone, and if I had someone who was put off by that, I would be open to discussing it, but that's my preferred style, and it seems to be okay with all the people I play D&D with, based on my knowledge of them as people as well as experiences we've had with e.g. Deadlands and the like, in pseudohistorical settings.I honestly don't know what you mean. I asked what you would do, pretty directly. I didn't ask what you thought I should do. The question is: what would you, running this game, do in regards to historical unpleasantness?
I wasn't asking for advice, I was curious what YOU would do.
I play a lot of Call of Cthulhu, which centers warty historical periods (1920s, 1890s, and others) and centers an utterly vile historical person (H.P. Lovecraft), but I prize player safety, player inclusion, and having fun around the table infinitely more than historical accuracy. Playing in the historical USA I would only include a few disapproving looks about women dressed in any way the time period wouldn't like, but not include NPCs spouting sexism at women characters. I've kicked players for RPing the sexism of the 1920s. It has absolutely no place at my tables. Historical accuracy be damned. This applies to racism and all other kinds of bigotry. The people at the table are more important. This is a game. Not a historical reenactment with textbooks open to make sure we get everything exactly right. I do my best to make things historically accurate outside of the social expectations. And I've discovered quite a few weird bits of history as a result.
But here's the thing. Those prejudices aren't built in to the people, they are cultural norms. The pcs from those cultures are assumed to understand those prejudices but not necessarily to share them. And things like bigotry, religious division, colonization, etc, are things that I depict as true to the world but BAD. When I roleplay a murderer, there's no question that he's the bad guy (assuming the pcs know he's a murderer- exceptions may apply if they don't know The Truth yet). When I roleplay a bigot, it's clear that the bigotry is not at all a positive trait. Even when I RP bigotry against traditional enemy races, such as orcs or gnolls or goblins, I try to make it very clear that this isn't something for heroic pcs to emulate; it's something that they can try to overcome or change, that they have the opportunity to lead people away from. Slavers are not the good guys. Religious persecution isn't what the good guys do, even if the church they follow does; the good guys are reformers.
Am I doing a disservice to the people who suffered through it by not depicting it honestly?
Sorry, the original post read something like:I honestly don't know what you mean. I asked what you would do, pretty directly. I didn't ask what you thought I should do. The question is: what would you, running this game, do in regards to historical unpleasantness?