Dungeonosophy
Legend
Insulting other members
Hi, I never said literally all legacy products. I suggested (based on another poster's suggestion) a crowdsourced flagging process, which would be intelligently prioritized by a standing team of Wizards cultural consultants.4. Here's the thing, though. You're specifically asking for this to apply to all legacy products. All of them.
I said, if there are hundreds of legacy products which have "ethnic, racial, and gender prejudices", then so be it. All of those would be specifically addressed by the Wizards cultural amends team. Why not? Wrong is wrong. Whether it's one book, a dozen, a hundred, or five hundred.
You're right that some products might have "relatively" minor amends to make, such as "sins of omission." That just means that those products would have a quick and simple DRAGON+ article...maybe only a paragraph or so, which would be perpetually linked to that product's legacy page, and there might only be one or two relevant charities.
If there are legacy products which the cultural team flips through and finds no prejudice or other problems, then voila! No further comment necessary. In fact, even the "boilerplate disclaimer" could be removed. Whew!
I imagine that after dozens or hundreds of amends reviews, the cultural team would get more and more quick and skillful at discerning what is problematic, and what is acceptable / respectful.
It looks like you didn't read my proposal, since I already suggested a concrete way for each specific community to be included in the "amends monies." In the case of GAZ10, that would be: Vodun, Lakota, Nakota (Assiniboine/Stoney), Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk), Absaalooke (Crow), Mongolian, Chinese, Tibetan, and Bhutanese. There are almost certainly gender and LGBT under-representation issues as well. The quantity of "jabs" would be tallied, and the amends monies approximately divvied between them proportionately.5. Then there's the issue of the charitable selection. You concentrated on the slurs toward American Indians and suggested (IIRC) a Lakota charity. Great! But they weren't the only ones that were insulted, were they? There are insults towards Asians, towards women, towards black Americans... there's a lot that didn't age well.
Furthermore, if you gave me an hour to search on the internet, I could find a worthy cultural charity for all nine cultural communities which are slandered in GAZ10. I'd imagine that the professional cultural consultants who would make up Wizards team would have even quicker ideas of where to find relevant charities, given their embedded position in various cultural communities.
I suggested that specificity is an important aspect of amends; but well, there are worse things than the United Way.So this, too, becomes yet another issue of covering the corporate behind- when everyone gets insulted, you just end up with a charitable donation to some pabulum charity, like the United Way (ugh).
I'm not sure what your goal is. Do you really think I'm going to throw up my hands and say: "Gee, you're right! I hadn't thought about how Wizards might just give the amends monies to United Way. That would be so lame. I guess I'll just give up."
You say "there's so many products." Well, an objective process would determine exactly how many products contain "ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice." There are only so many. Even if it's 300 products, that's only 300. The process would have a beginning, and an end. And, if done well (and I believe that Wizards has the capacity to do it well), an amends process could generate enormous goodwill.6. Now, here's the rub. Maybe you think that this specific product is so offensive it has to be dealt with- obviously, the peanuts generated by it don't really matter, and it's almost tokenism at that point, right? But there's so many products, from the ones that people keep calling attention to (GAZ10, Oriental Adventures and its progeny, Ravenloft, etc. etc. etc) to all the issues in all the books (like the casual misogyny that I mentioned above). Any review would find these issues.
Every time someone saw the link to the DRAGON+ amends article on the DriveThruRPG product page, and saw the list of specific charities which their PDF or POD purchase is fueling, there'd be a boost of interest and goodwill. This would generate goodwill for decades and decades to come. Even in D&D 7E...and D&D 12E...people are always going to be interested in the classic sources of the various D&D worlds.
The cycle is not endless. There are only so many Wizards' books with "ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice."So in the end, what do you think a rational company would do? Enter into an endless cycle of publicly apologizing and making amends and paying money to charities for products that don't even make them much money
But even Wizards says: "this work will never end."
You could ask the same question about literally any amendatory action that Wizards has taken, such as the revision of the Vistani, the invention of two new non-Lolthian drow cultures, etc.
It seems that in your "rational" world, it's all about the lowest bottom line. What, are you a professional corporate advisor?
Why don't you get out of my way, and stop your naysaying?
Well, who cares? If that's what it comes to, then so be it. Pull the whole legacy PDF program.or just pulling the whole thing?
Yet I never called for that.
But I'd prefer that future over continuing to identify with a bunch of snarky, congenitally negative, fannish D&D co-dependents who are afraid to speak up about (or even to conceive that there might be) prejudicial "skeletons in the closet", and who just want to "keep up appearances" and be nice, obedient wittle customers, so as to keep the PDF toy milk flowing from the Wizards' teat.
Thank you.Again, I will reiterate that I appreciated the research and work you did in the OP.
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