D&D General Just sweeping dirty dishes under the rug: D&D, Sexism, and the '70s

[Steampunkette]

nuTSR?

Again, they had other things that forced them out of business, including bad product and copyright infringement, but there was definitely some shouting down regarding their biases in their stuff. Granted, it was absolutely justified.

I mean... not really?

NuTSR wanted to put out a product that specifically appealed to a narrow sliver of the TTRPG community. They advertised that product as hard as they could, and had their preferred sliver of the TTRPG community backing them.

But that sliver wasn't big enough to support a company. They'd need to aim for a wider audience for that, and they weren't interested in a wider audience.

No one who rebuked NuTSR's nastiness and bigotry on Facebook or Twitter or whatever was ever going to buy their Nazi Pseudoscience Sci Fi book. And a lot of people didn't buy their "Goblins" game because it was poorly written and half-done schlock.

And they even had a successful Kickstarter for their Dungeon Crawl game from that sliver of the gaming populace... That they didn't fulfill at all, because they either pocketed the money and walked off or just didn't plan their kickstarter costs from the start and couldn't afford to fulfill their orders.

NuTSR failed because they were bad at designing products, bad at selling products, and bad at fulfilling their orders. Because the products were never -actually- the goal. It was to get Wizards of the Coast to buy the TSR brand name from them for millions of dollars.

Which was never gonna happen.

All the backlash did was ostracize them from the community they never wanted to be a part of, anyhow.

 

[Bedrockgames]

nuTSR?

Again, they had other things that forced them out of business, including bad product and copyright infringement, but there was definitely some shouting down regarding their biases in their stuff. Granted, it was absolutely justified.

This wasn’t at all an example I had in mind. I haven’t followed any of the news about them. I’ve given my response to the question about specific to @Mannahnin and @Hussar. I’ve told them what my answer is to this line of inquiry. If they aren’t satisfied with my statement that it is abundantly clear what sort of things I mean in the hobby (which I think it is because it is widespread and goes beyond publishing and design), then that is fair. I haven’t persuaded them. They don’t have to agree with my assessment. But I am not going to answer the question again if they keep asking it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't buy Planescape, so I wouldn't know.

A very nice ENworlder let me look at their copy.

 

[Belen]

Too often though it seems people are getting called out because they didn’t understand educated society decided this word or that word means something else now, or this word is no longer the preferred word to use. Again if someone has a degree they have a much greater chance of having picked up this etiquette.

This is true.

We undergo weekly sensitivity language training in my job where someone discusses problematic words and phrases.

For example, I am now a person with diabetes rather than a diabetic. I still call myself a diabetic because it is shorter and quicker, but we cannot publish diabetic any longer.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Honestly, that seems like a really big asterisk. Almost like they were saying "keep the slavery because getting rid of it causes too many problems." Which is... not a good thing, or what most people would want in a modern edition, I think. It's probably realistic of societies where slavery is suddenly abolished, but it's also one of those strange times where for some reason, realism is required for this but not necessarily for other things.

I prefer realism in as many things as possible in my game, but each table should make the decision for themselves with which they are comfortable. It's still supposed to be fun.

 

[Belen]

who decides what constitutes an overreaction?

I think if the online reaction is torches and pitchforks or tar and feathers and you are getting death threats, phone calls to your family and employer, then you have an overreaction.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Here in Sweden it's been an enigma at least since I was a teen in the 80ies how the US can vomit out incredibly violent media (combined with bonkers non-existent gun laws), but showing a nipple shakes the nation. All the ongoing book bans etc still basically seems to concern showing real and metaphorical nipples, while you can buy guns in vending machines. It's a moral weighting that's hard to wrap one's head around as a north European.

I think Cooper Harris from the movie  Eurotrip said it best, "America is a nation founded by prudes".

 

[mamba]

I just don’t think saying people who don’t have a lived experience must be quiet and listen does anything to help the people you are saying you want to help. And I think it is a terrible way to have a dialogue. People should listen to each other obviously but they still need to evaluate what they are hearing

if you have no experience with something but the other person does, then I’d say you benefit from listening to their perspective instead of saying ‘but I know better’ because you quite literally do not (unless this were your field of study maybe). You would not do that in any other field of expertise (hopefully)

Your ‘evaluating what you hear’ sounds an awful lot like twisting it through your biases and ultimately dismissing it. To a degree that is unavoidable, we are all humans, but the less we let our biases affect our understanding, the better (that is why the scientific method is designed to minimize them). So maybe a little less evaluating and a bit more actually listening would be good

 

[Mannahnin]

This wasn’t at all an example I had in mind. I haven’t followed any of the news about them. I’ve given my response to the question about specific to @Mannahnin and @Hussar. I’ve told them what my answer is to this line of inquiry. If they aren’t satisfied with my statement that it is abundantly clear what sort of things I mean in the hobby (which I think it is because it is widespread and goes beyond publishing and design), then that is fair. I haven’t persuaded them. They don’t have to agree with my assessment. But I am not going to answer the question again if they keep asking it.

It is absolutely not clear. We do not all know.

You have asserted that a thing happens (that tabletop RPG publishers get shouted down and mobbed online over content, and that this suppresses that content), I've furnished the two closest examples I can think of, and you've declined to provide any. I've stopped asking you directly.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think it the online reaction is torches and pitchforks or tar and feathers and you are getting death threats, phone calls to your family and employer, then you have an overreaction.

Are there any examples of that happening over tabletop RPG content?