You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6207133" data-attributes="member: 4937">Usually.No, you don't.  This quickly approaches claims that the person is having 'badwrongfun' if he wants to use D&D to run a game set in the Roman Republic, bronze age Judea, or a game set in Tekumel, or a game set in the Ice Ages were only stone tools are available, or D&D as a steampunk game inspired by the Firefly TV show, or D&D in Shoganate Japan, or D&D as a horror game in a qausi-Victorian era.  Could other game systems do a better job?  Maybe.  That's a matter of opinion.  D&D however, and particular D&D stripped to its D20 core, can do the job and we I think have little right to tell the DM, "Your game must have elves and dragons"  or "Your game must be set in a particular fantasy world or its not D&D." Some of the campaigns that EnWorld posters most fondly remember weren't trope fantasy worlds.But more to the point, the problem of sexism isn't something we need to address merely in dungeons and dragons, but in any game it could turn up in.  If it is invariably true that mechanical differences between men and women is sexist, then our justification for saying that can't be, "Well dragons exist, so why are you insisting on 'realism' in portraying the sexes?"If that was the only thing they choose, it might seem pretty salient to me as well.   But this dodges the point I raised earlier.  What if the DM in question was not chose just one bit or another, but had clearly spent great effort to make a particular setting evocative and simulationist - be it 16th century Europe or 16th century Japan.  Is what we are ultimately saying is that it is badwrongfun to have a setting which lacks the egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, and progressive politics of modern America?   I have a campaign that is entirely set within goblin society.  The goblins as I have portrayed them are highly sexist beings that do see females only as having value as baby making machines.  Roles for independent females within that society are limited, and female characters face great discrimination.  Rape is considered a normal aspect of society and not really frowned upon.  Without going into the campaign secrets, I believe that ultimately the issues I'm addressing in this 'anti-campaign' (with the players starting out in the role of traditional D&D villains) are worthy of exploration.  Are we suggesting that my goblin campaign must be censured for fear that it might make women uncomfortable and that it is not only badwrongfun but entirely immoral and worthy of scorn?</blockquote>

Verification