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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4658067" data-attributes="member: 15538">Maybe Mialee realized she didn't have a date for prom night. Getting back to the original line of discussion... it bothered me when they banished half-orcs from AD&D because it did seem squeamish. But I didn't see D&D as being intentionally marketed toward children. And for the young people who were interested in it, I didn't think it should be edited out, any more than a teenager should be protected from studying Vitenam or reading Camus's The Stranger. But D&D 4e is clearly intended for a mainstream audience. You can't simply point at the source material and say, "Look, this kind of stuff happened in Conan and Dragonlance, and heck, the Arthurian stories, all the time," and be safe. D&D 4e is intended to sell at Borders so I think it makes sense to produce something palatable. So no half-orcs in the core book. But by the same token, I find it difficult to imagine avoiding the topic altogether. As I pointed out above, human-orc interbreeding is possible, then you are going to have half-orcs who came about as a result of rape. Because orcs are usually evil, in fact, they are often psychopathic marauders. I don't think you can sustain the PG-rated version of D&D through too many expansions before it starts to wear thin.So yes, some young people do play D&D. And yes, you have to keep a wide audience in mind. But in a game with swords-and-sorcery roots, you have to leave some room for discussing some adult topics. D&D may be "just for fun" but it's an imaginative game and if you aren't willing to take some things somewhat seriously, there is not much point. I wouldn't use this scenario to sell D&D on a big marketing display in Border's, but let's imagine one of the modules features a character who has lost fingers as a result of racketeering. In real life, organized crime and the use of mutilation as a fear tactic is real, does affect many people, and may trigger emotional responses from some gamers. But I wouldn't take that as a reason to say that nowhere should D&D mention the chopping off of hands by gansters. Ditto any scenario that mentions slavery. You could make a really long list of potentially explosive topics, and if you removed them all, you would be left with something with less moral scope than the animated D&D cartoon. But I think it's perfectly legitimate to market your core products with the idea of making them palatable to a wide audience and respectful of some real world issues. So maybe the core rulebook shouldn't have half-orcs, or prices for slaves, or mentions of mutilation tactics, or a sample adventure involving Rosemary's baby, etc. But trying to write around the rape issue entirely is trying too hard. It's just too hard to imagine orcs marauding a village and not engaging in a variety of vile acts, ranging from rape to man-eating to torture to desecration and all the rest. They are, after all, evil.</blockquote>

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