D&D 5E How do you hope WotC treats the upcoming classic settings?

[Hussar]

Even so, referring to a novel as YA when not labeled as such can be seen as a diminutive. Like telling someone that the thing they like is just for kids (and implying that the fan is immature for enjoying it). Maybe people are just defending a story they like.

But... Dragonlance IS labeled as YA fiction. It was at the time and it still is. How is it diminuative when it's simply the truth?

 

[Hussar]

They will change things to be more agreeable. IE Dark Sun may not have massive slavery. Dragonlance may not have that all Kender are kleptos or all Gnomes are Tinker Gnomes. Takhisis isnt an evil goddess, shes just misunderstood.

.... no. Just no. And, frankly, if that's your understanding of the issues around things like orcs and whatnot, you really, really have missed the point.

 

[Hussar]

There are actually lore reasons why Gnomes are all tinkerers (in a fashion) and all Kender feel wanderlust and "borrow" things and why Dwarvesa ll like to create things etc.

You can't say it doesnt make sense when the in game lore reason is literally "god magic makes them do it".

Someone help me out here. THere's a word for using in universe elements to justify bad ideas, but, I'm drawing a blank on it.

 

[jasper]

How should they treat them? Not publish them at all.

 

[Steampunkette]

Even so, referring to a novel as YA when not labeled as such can be seen as a diminutive. Like telling someone that the thing they like is just for kids (and implying that the fan is immature for enjoying it). Maybe people are just defending a story they like.

Oh, sure. But within the context of the discussion it was just a description of reality. Not an insult.

I suppose it depends in how you look at it.

Most of what you mentioned wouldn't be out of place in books I read.

Love triangles, oppression, death, and such isn't out of place for even just Dragonlance.

I think it's fair to say aspects of Dragonlance are more whimsical in parts. Though, that would also be true when comparing DL to other books I read around the same time.

Hunger Games doesn't seem particularly worse to me. The ideas being presented are just different and in a different genre.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is a book series written by Suzanne Collins. Lavinia's Brother - Speared by the capitol. Unnamed District 8 Male - Throat slit by Marvel in the Cornucopia Bloodbath. Unnamed District 10 Female - Stabbed repeatedly by Glimmer offscreen during the Cornucopia Bloodbath. Unnamed...

listofdeaths.fandom.com

Here's the list of deaths, which are sanitized for the wiki. Perhaps it's been too long since I read the Chronicles, but I don't remember there being this many deaths, much less this many gruesome deaths of innocent and/or protagonist characters...

Also no point in which Tika was forced to stand naked in front of thousands of people...

So... y'know. I'm not trying to say the Hunger Games or other more modern works than the Chronicles are "Worse" or something. I'm just saying that the Chronicles had less total "Adult" violent material to them by comparison. And it was set during a time of war.

It has to do with society's changing tolerances, more than anything. But ultimately I think the Chronicles would be solidly in the tween, teen, and young adult reading level. Which, y'know... is just a thing. Not a value judgement.

 

[Faolyn]

There are actually lore reasons why Gnomes are all tinkerers (in a fashion) and all Kender feel wanderlust and "borrow" things and why Dwarvesa ll like to create things etc.

You can't say it doesnt make sense when the in game lore reason is literally "god magic makes them do it".

That makes it even dumber, IMO. That's not a lore. That's "we can't think of a decent reason so we just say a god did it."

 

[Hussar]

Considering that YA fiction is probably the best selling fiction of all time (thank you JK), I'm not sure being in the YA genre is a bad thing.

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But, just a thought about cutting stuff for "modern sensibilities" and the like.

Take the slavery in Dark Sun. Some are saying that it will be cut because we can't have slavery in works. That's not what's being argued at all. Slavery in a D&D product is perfectly fine (read the Monster Manual if you think it's not). What isn't fine would be to celebrate slavery. To try to justify it somehow and make it acceptable or even just accepted. Slavery in Dark Sun is evil. It's shown (and has always been shown) to be evil. There's no shying away from the horrors of slavery in the setting. And, making slavers the bad guys in adventures is pretty easy.

What would be problematic would be an adventure where the PC's are hired to go around to villages, kill all the males they find, round up all the women, bring them back to be sold into sexual slavery and then rewarded. But, fortunately, no one is publishing that adventure.

OTOH, you look at kender kleptomania. Here we have mental issues being paraded as parody and celebrated. They're not mentally ill, they're just "that way". They were just "made that way". It's diminishing the actual issues that mental issues cause in the world and those who suffer from them. Psychotic as hero instead of someone who is suffering. So, yeah, kender are problematic and, in a future Dragonlance product, you will probably either see the whole kleptomania thing fade to the background, or be seen as a curse. The Greygem didn't do them any favors when it twisted their minds and turned them into Kender.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How should they treat them? Not publish them at all

 

[Charlaquin]

You mean like, say, Harry Potter? 8 is the first year for Hogwarts (or is it 9?). Seemed to work pretty well.

11

 

[Charlaquin]

Someone help me out here. THere's a word for using in universe elements to justify bad ideas, but, I'm drawing a blank on it.

Thermian Argument, though I think the term frequently gets misused. The Folding Ideas video that coined the term was specifically about responses to critique of a writer’s choices that defend those choices based on in-fiction lore.