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Message: <blockquote data-quote="deleteaccount" data-source="post: 9403360" data-attributes="member: 20296">For me, the "problems" I see here:"Things are problematic" <- You have a problem, i.e. an emotion you feel when you read about it. You don't like the emotion. But the method you go about is to censor or blame the text. You get offended for other people, or at least say you do because it's virtuous for you, and/or interpret mythological references through some postmodern lense. (e.g. Tiamat) Mythical monsters and archetypal enemies are forced to become postmodern representations for some real life group or invented identity, instead of just having a clear-cut moral distinction between demon-bred monstrosities you can go kill because it's fun.Need for representation <- The hobby was made by men and men play by creating ideals, and exploring mythic/psychic phenomena through shared storytelling. When men play, they usually try to imitate the hero (the focus of the story), and do not try to be represented in their current form in the fiction. As a very rough distinction: Boys emulate Batman, girls try to make Barbie act like they would act. We play differently. You can see this distinction in movies too: archetypal masculine heroes go through hardship and strife to metaphorically die and be reborn a hero. That's the heroes journey. In many postmodern movies with archetypal feminine heroines the protagonist is just great to begin with.History is history even in medieval fantasy, and terrible things can be fun to explore too. Most of human history has been filled with all kinds of wars, strife, power disparities, and making the fantasy story represent non-existent version of the modern world is not fun for me. Through shared storytelling you can also explore the shadow side of you, and others, and find new moral perspectives.  Greg Stafford said an rpg session is a shamanic journey to the subconscious. People bring out parts of their personality to the stage through their characters, and in my experience people often show 2-3 parts that are not typically present in every day life or every day consciousness.The freedom we have in a free society is that we don't have to revise our history or books (like totalitarians do), but we can enjoy the old perspectives and use those to reflect on our current ones. The fun of rpgs is that you can play them any way you want. My worry with D&D being owned by an American company is that they will soften and pad all the sharp edges of the product until it's an unrecognizable grey nothing-blob (or worse yet, an everything pizza where everything can be anything) that will not cause any emotions in anyone, and subsequently lose all of its identity and D&D-ness. Former fantasy races will become an ecstatic corporate scifi creature devoid of any mythological or psychological connotation and appeal, just to appease some cultural consultants to get funding from Blackrock.The latter seems to have happened to Star Wars already after it moved away from the mythic story.</blockquote>

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